BD  431  . K5  1923 
King,  Henry  Churchill, 
1934. 

Seeing  life  whole 


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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
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https://archive.org/details/seeinglifewholecOOking_O 


SEEING  LIFE  WHOLE 

A  Christian  Philosophy  of  Life 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •  BOSTON  •  CHICAGO  •  DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •  SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


SEEING  LIFE  WHOLE 

A  Christian  Philosophy  of  Life 


s 


THE  DEEMS  LECTURES 

•'''  •  ’  V  Ur 

/  \  ‘'A  \  '  1 

FOR  1922 

/  V 

NEW  YORK  UNIVERSITY 

J  A  i\i  j.  ’ 

1  1924 

V  / 

fimn  " 


BY 


HENRY  CHURCHILL  KING 


PRESIDENT  OF  OBERLIN  COLLEGE 


j]2«to  gotfc 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1923 


All  rights  reserved 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


Copyright,  1923, 

By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  printed.  Published  September,  1923. 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 
New  York,  U.  S.  A. 


1 


PREFACE 

This  book  had  its  origin  in  an  invitation  from  New 
York  University  to  give  the  lectures  for  1922  on  the 
Deems  Foundation.  The  character  of  the  Lectureship, 
growing  out  of  “The  Institute  of  Christian  Philosophy,” 
practically  determined  the  scope  of  the  lectures,  as  indi¬ 
cated  in  the  secondary  title  of  the  book — A  Christian 
Philosophy  of  Life.  At  the  same  time  this  determination 
of  general  subject  has  made  it  impossible  for  me  alto¬ 
gether  to  avoid  traversing  ground  covered  in  certain  of 
my  other  books.  But  I  have  sought  a  fresh  treatment 
throughout  in  the  presentation  of  material  both  by  the 
special  consideration  of  questions  just  now  pressing  upon 
many  minds,  and  by  applying  to  the  entire  discussion  the 
much  needed  principle  of  “seeing  life  whole.”  This  prin¬ 
ciple  thus  constitutes  the  main  title  of  the  book.  In  a 
practical  application  of  that  principle,  it  will  be  seen,  I 
have  aimed  to  give  a  sixfold  approach  to  the  problem  of  a 
Christian  philosophy  of  life — the  scientific  approach,  the 
psychological  approach,  the  value  approach,  the  personal 
and  ethical  approach,  the  philosophical  approach,  and 
the  Biblical  and  Christian  approach.  It  has  been  hoped 
so  to  show  the  close  and  vital  relations  of  the  most  signifi¬ 
cant  lines  of  modern  thought  to  Christian  living  and  think¬ 
ing.  This  has  compelled  in  preparation  a  many-sided 
review  of  material,  that  in  so  brief  a  discussion  has  been 


v 


vi  Preface 

reflected  perhaps  even  more  in  what  has  been  omitted 
than  in  what  has  been  said.  All  that  one  can  do  in  such 
an  attempt  is  to  say  as  honestly  as  he  can  how  these 
questions  best  come  home  to  himself. 

Henry  Churchill  King 
Oberlin  College,  February,  1923. 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 


I.  Necessity  of  an  Ever  Renewed  Apologetic 

II.  Constant  Endeavor  to  See  Life  Whole  . 

III.  A  Variety  of  Approaches  to  Our  Problem 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  SCIENTIFIC  APPROACH 

I.  The  Scientific  Field,  Spirit,  and  Method  .... 

II.  Reasons  for  Beginning  with  the  Scientific  Approach 

III.  The  Contributions  of  Modern  Science  to  the  Ideal 
Interests . 


IV.  The  Difficulties  for  the  Religious  View  Arising 
from  Evolution . 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  APPROACH 

I.  The  Significant  Breadth  of  the  More  Modern  Psy¬ 
chology  . . . 

II.  No  Quarrel  with  Such  a  Definition  of  Psychology 

III,  Behaviorism  in  Psychology . 

IV.  Great  Practical  Inferences  from  Modern  Psychology 

V.  The  Moral  and  Religious  Significance  of  These 
Great  Inferences . 

VI.  The  Psychological  Inferences  Are  Indubitably  Chris¬ 
tian  Emphases . 

VII.  Psychology  Has  Much  Help  to  Give  to  Practical 
Religion — The  Psychological  Conditions  of  Self- 
Mastery  . 

VIII.  The  Christian  Mastery  of  One’s  Fears  and  Anxieties 

vii 


PAGE 

1 

4 

6 


8 

9 

11 

19 


29 

30 
32 
35 

37 

40 

41 
46 


Contents 


•  •  • 

vm 

CHAPTER  III 

THE  VALUE  APPROACH 

PAGE 

I.  The  Importance  of  the  Point  of  View  of  Value  .  .  53 

II.  We  Are  Commonly  Introduced  into  the  Values  of 

Life  Through  the  Testimony  of  Others  ....  56 

III.  The  Necessity  of  Absolute  Honesty . 62 

IV.  The  Necessity  of  Modesty . 65 

V.  Staying  Persistently  in  the  Presence  of  the  Best  67 

VI.  A  Broad  Analogy  Between  the  Realms  of  Value  .  72 

CHAPTER  IV 

THE  PERSONAL  AND  ETHICAL  APPROACH 

I.  The  Principle  of  Reverence  for  Personality  ...  75 

II.  Our  Whole  Constitution  Looks  to  Personal  Rela¬ 
tions  . 78 

III.  Reverence  for  Personality  Includes  Self-Respect  .  80 

IV.  Respect  for  tile  Liberty  of  Others . 88 

V.  Reverence  for  the  Sanctity  of  the  Other’s  Inner 

Personality . 94 

CHAPTER  V 

THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  APPROACH 

I.  Tendency  to  Underrate  Philosophy . 104 

II.  Definitions  of  the  Sphere  of  Philosophy  ....  106 

III.  Fundamental  Philosophic  Points  of  View  ....  110 

1.  The  Organic  View  of  Truth . 110 

2.  The  Tests  of  Truth  or  Reality . Ill 

3.  The  Three  Spheres  of  Reality — the  Is,  the  Must, 

and  the  Ought . 118 

4.  The  Three  Great  Ideals  of  Truth,  Goodness,  and 

Beauty . 119 

5.  The  Mission  of  Mechanism . 121 

IV.  The  Problem  of  the  Possible  Harmony  of  Process  and 

Meaning . 123 

V.  Two  Further  Philosophical  Considerations  .  .  .  128 

1.  One’s  Own  Self  the  Best  Key  for  Understanding 

of  the  Universe . 129 

2.  The  Seeming  Unreality  of  the  Spiritual  Life  .  .  130 


Contents 


IX 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  BIBLICAL  AND  CHRISTIAN  APPROACH 

PAGE 

I.  The  Christian  View  of  the  Bible . 133 

II.  Present-Day  Obstacles  to  a  Biblical  Approach  to  a 

Christian  Philosophy  of  Life . 137 

1.  The  Doctrine  of  the  Inerrancy  of  the  Scriptures  .  137 

2.  An  Extreme  Apocalypticism . 143 

3.  Spiritualism  . 144 

4.  Christian  Science . 148 

5.  A  False  Type  of  Mysticism . 148 

III.  The  Christian  Way  of  Seeing  Life  Whole.  “By 
Every  Word  That  Proceedeth  Out  of  the  Mouth 
of  God” . 151 

1.  Not  by  Bread  Alone . 152 

2.  Not  by  Marvel  and  Ecstasy  Alone . 155 

3.  Not  by  Making  Means  into  Ends . 158 


SEEING  LIFE  WHOLE 

A  Christian  Philosophy  of  Life 


SEEING  LIFE  WHOLE 

A  Christian  Philosophy  of  Life 

INTRODUCTION 

There  is  always  needed  a  constantly  renewed  apologetic 
for  the  ideal  life, — for  all  our  ideals,  for  truth,  goodness 
and  beauty,  for  religion,  for  the  Christian  view  of  God 
and  the  world.  All  ideals  are  alike  concerned.  Persist¬ 
ently  and  with  every  change  in  knowledge  men  press  the 
vital  questions :  Have  the  world  and  life  abiding  meaning 
and  value?  Can  we,  in  the  midst  of  an  evolving  world, 
keep  our  faith  in  the  conservation  and  the  progress  of 
values  ?  This  is  the  problem  of  this  Lectureship, 

i 

Such  an  ever  renewed  apologetic  for  the  great  values 
of  life  is  needed  for  several  reasons. 

First  of  all,  such  a  new  apologetic  is  needed  to  express 
the  reality  and  meaning  of  our  ideal  interests  in  the  terms 
of  our  own  times;  even  though  there  be  no  essential  change 
in  viewpoints.  For  each  period  has  its  own  favorite  ways 
of  putting  things,  and  one  of  the  best  evidences  of  the 
vitality  of  a  man’s  ideal  or  religious  convictions  is  to  be 
found  in  his  desire  constantly  to  re-translate  these  con¬ 
victions  into  immediately  current  terms.  These  changing 

i 


2 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

terms  may  trouble  those  who  are  quite  content  with  the 
old  terms,  and  they  may  wish  that  the  changing  genera¬ 
tion  were  alike  content.  But  in  fact  such  changes  in  the 
putting  of  a  man’s  beliefs  are  real  causes  for  congratula¬ 
tion  for  all;  for  they  mean  genuine  independent  interest 
in  the  great  values,  and  no  mere  indifferent  willingness 
passively  to  take  over  the  formulas  of  others. 

A  changing  apologetic  for  all  our  ideals  is  also  needed 
because  of  constantly  growing  knowledge,  and  the  con¬ 
sequent  wisdom,  if  not  the  necessity,  of  relating  the  ex¬ 
pression  of  our  ideals  to  this  whole  of  knowledge.  One  of 
the  best  justifications  of  any  ideal  interest  is  its  ability  to 
adapt  itself  to  changing  conditions.  And  this  needs  to  be 
repeatedly  shown  for  our  full  peace  of  mind. 

An  ever  renewed  apologetic  is  demanded,  too,  to  meet 
incidentally  any  special  new  questions  arising ;  although 
these  questions  are  generally  new  chiefly  in  form,  when  we 
look  deeply  enough  into  them.  In  this  discussion,  then, 
we  are  to  seek  to  meet  as  clearly  and  definitely  as  possible 
the  present-day  obstacles  to  a  Christian  philosophy  of 
life.  These  obstacles  come  both  from  within  and  from 
without  the  ranks  of  intentional  defenders  of  the  faith. 
For  the  worst  enemies  of  a  cause  are  sometimes  to  be 
found  among  its  unwise  friends.  The  new  present-day 
questions,  too,  grow  naturally  right  out  of  the  new  inner 
world  of  thought — the  world  of  modern  science  and  its 
evolutionary  point  of  view,  of  the  historical  spirit,  of  the 
new  psychology,  of  sociology,  of  comparative  religion.  A 
perfectly  enormous  mass  of  new  knowledge  and  new  points 
of  view — illustrated  in  the  Encyclopaedia  of  Religion  and 
Ethics — has  thus  poured  in  upon  the  men  of  the  last  hun¬ 
dred  years ;  and  it  is  not  strange  that  the  ideal  interests 
have  even  yet  not  been  able  wholly  to  assimilate  it.  We 
cannot  evade  facing  this  new  inner  world  of  thought, 


Introduction  3 

and  seeing  what  it  means  for  our  ideal  interests,  and  espe¬ 
cially  for  our  religious  and  Christian  faiths. 

An  adequate  meeting  of  the  questions  so  raised — it  is 
more  and  more  plain — requires  not  simply  a  lean-to  for 
our  traditional  philosophy  and  theology,  but  to  some 
extent  a  reorganization  of  the  whole  architectural  plan 
of  our  apologetic  for  the  ideal  and  religious  interests. 
Too  largely  men  tend  to  keep  their  ideas,  old  and  new,  in 
water-tight  compartments,  not  introducing  them  to  one 
another,  and  so  attaining  no  organic  unity  in  their  living 
and  thinking.  And  this  is  likely  to  be  particularly  true, 
where  many  fields  of  knowledge  and  questions  of  faith  are 
concerned.  In  such  a  case,  certainly,  the  ideal  apologetic 
cannot  be  simply  an  offensive  attack ;  it  must  be  open- 
minded  toward  all  the  facts,  and  be  able  to  explain  the 
difficulties  felt,  and  to  embody  the  full  measure  of  truth 
the  new  knowledge  contains.  For  on  both  sides,  where 
men  have  tenaciously  insisted  on  a  position  taken,  we  may 
be  sure  there  is  some  element  of  vital  truth  involved,  which 
needs  fully  to  be  taken  into  account. 

Moreover,  the  problem  for  both  theoretical  and  practi¬ 
cal  faith  is  constantly  a  new  and  critical  one;  as,  for 
example,  both  Romanes  and  Huxley  illustrated,  from  dif¬ 
ferent  points  of  view,  in  their  moral  and  religious  diffi¬ 
culties  with  the  evolution  theory.  Lotze  long  ago  put  the 
matter  with  precision:  “We  can  never  look  on  indiffer¬ 
ently  when  we  see  cognition  undermining  the  foundations 
of  faith,  or  faith  calmly  putting  aside  as  a  whole  that 
which  scientific  zeal  has  built  up  in  detail.”  1  Either 
course  brings  inevitable  rupture  into  a  man’s  inner  life. 
There  are  great  values  to  be  preserved  on  both  sides. 
Christian  Science  gives  an  almost  perfect  example  of  the 
second  danger  Lotze  names :  “Faith  calmly  putting  aside 
1  Microcosmus,  p.  xi. 


4>  Seeing  Life  Whole 

as  a  whole  that  which  scientific  zeal  has  built  up  in 
detail.” 

The  need  of  an  ever  new  apologetic  for  the  ideal  in¬ 
terests  corresponds ,  also,  to  the  importance  of  new  vari¬ 
ations  in  organic  evolution.  For  as  Hoff ding  suggests: 
“If  new  variations  can  arise,  not  only  in  organic  but  per¬ 
haps  also  in  inorganic  nature,  new  tasks  are  placed  before 
the  human  mind.”  Darwin  “has  shown  us  forces  and 
tendencies  in  nature  which  make  absolute  systems  im¬ 
possible,  at  the  same  time  that  they  give  us  new  objects 
and  problems.  There  is  still  a  place  for  what  Lessing 
called  ‘the  unceasing  striving  after  truth,’  while  ‘absolute 
truth’  (in  the  sense  of  a  closed  system)  is  unattainable 
so  long  as  life  and  experience  are  going  on.”  2 

All  this  quite  fits  man  as  himself  a  growing  creature, 
and  as  having  in  each  case  an  individuality  which  itself 
may  become  a  “favorable  variation.”  From  this  point  of 
view  an  adequate  apologetic  for  Christianity,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  should  be  and  can  be  no  mere  logically  skilful 
defense  of  long  settled  formulas ;  but  should  help  rather 
to  a  constantly  enlarging  and  deepening  and  progres¬ 
sively  successful  putting  of  the  Christian  values, — to  the 
constructive  task  of  making  clear  Christianity’s  power 
of  adaptability  to  changing  environments,  power  to  grow 
as  science  itself  grows. 


n 

Now  such  a  conception  of  a  Christian  apologetic  neces¬ 
sarily  involves  a  constant  endeavor  to  see  life  steadily 
and  to  see  it  whole. 

In  one  of  his  early  sonnets,  addressed  to  a  friend  who 

2  Evolution  in  Modern  Thought,  pp.  211-213;  Essay  by  Hoff  ding  on 
The  Influence  of  the  Conception  of  Evolution  on  Modern  Philosophy. 


Introduction 


5 


asked  him  who  “prop”  his  mind,  “in  these  bad  days,” 
Matthew  Arnold  expresses  gratitude  to  Homer  and  Epic¬ 
tetus,  but  most  of  all  to  Sophocles  whom  he  characterizes 
as  one 

Who  saw  life  steadily  and  saw  it  whole. 

There  have  been  few  definitions  of  rational  thinking  and 
living  more  suggestive  or  more  adequate  than  this  char¬ 
acterization  of  Sophocles.  For  to  see  life  steadily  and  to 
see  it  whole  might  be  called  a  definition  of  philosophy  in 
its  entirety,  and  of  both  the  end  and  the  process  of  edu¬ 
cation. 

We  are  to  make  sure,  then,  above  all,  in  any  adequate 
apologetic  for  life’s  greatest  values,  that  we  are  not 
ignoring  whole  spheres  of  life,  or  any  of  its  essential 
facts.  It  is  illustrative  of  this  danger  that,  when  thirty 
writers  recently  undertook  to  discuss  “The  Civilization  of 
the  United  States,”  and  in  many  lines  to  point  the  way  for 
the  rest  of  us,  it  did  not  seem  to  the  group  worth  while 
to  deal  independently  with  religion  at  all.  As  the  editor 
said  in  his  preface:  “They  were  not  interested  in  the 
topic.”  Had  not  Norman  Thomas  reason  for  saying, 
“The  omission  and  the  apology  for  it  are  a  measure  of  the 
superficiality  of  the  work  as  a  whole”? 

The  need  of  seeing  life  steadily  and  seeing  it  whole  is 
both  a  scientific  and  an  ideal  contention.  On  the  one 
hand,  it  is  a  part  of  science’s  insistence  on  facing  the 
facts  (not  simply  theories)  and  all  the  facts,  since  we 
cannot  be  sure  a  priori  which  facts  may  prove  themselves 
most  important ; — the  insistence  on  making  room  in  one’s 
hypothesis  for  all  the  facts  which  are  to  be  accounted  for. 

On  the  other  hand,  this  determination  to  see  life  whole 
is  the  essence  of  all  ideal  views ;  for  these  all  deal  with 
the  unity  and  meaning  of  the  entire  world,  and  hence 


6  Seeing  Life  Whole 

cannot  leave  out  of  account  the  whole.  All  the  ideals 
require  somewhere  this  vision  of  wholeness.  It  is  a  poet 
who  in  these  troublous  days  has  lost  this  faith,  who  thus 
explains  his  own  present  dumbness :  “A  synthesis  of  some 
sort  is  behind  all  good  verse.  Poetry  lives  in  a  cosmos.  A 
spiritual  order  is  its  soil.”  So  Professor  Irving  Babbitt 
too  says :  4 ‘The  final  test  of  creative  wrork  is  the  whole¬ 
ness  and  centrality  of  its  vision.”  In  like  manner,  religion 
must  say  with  ever  renewed  emphasis,  as  Dr.  Newman 
Smyth  prophetically  put  it  years  ago:  “The  whole  man, 
in  the  entirety  of  his  being,  is  the  organ  of  spiritual,  as 
he  is,  also,  of  earthly  feelings  and  experiences.”  3 

There  can  be,  thus,  no  adequate  putting  of  the  great 
values  in  any  narrow  provincial  fashion.  There  can  be 
no  exclusiveness.  For  the  dangers  of  breadth  are  best 
guarded  against  by  still  greater  breadth — by  wholeness. 
Men  are  far  more  likely  to  be  right  in  what  they  affirm 
than  in  what  they  deny. 


hi 

In  the  interests  of  wholeness,  then, — to  insure  seeing1 
life  steadily  and  seeing  it  whole, — in  this  constructive  task 
of  putting  the  great  values  especially  of  religion  in  their 
full  setting,  we  may  well  attempt  a  variety  of  approaches 
to  our  problem. 

The  following  approaches  to  our  study  of  the  abiding 
significance  of  religion  in  both  thought  and  life  are  thus 
naturally  suggested:  the  general  scientific  approach;  the 
psychological  approach;  the  value  approach;  the  per¬ 
sonal  and  ethical  approach ;  the  philosophical  approach ; 
the  Biblical  and  Christian  approach. 

The  general  scientific  approach  should  point  out  the 
8  The  Religious  Feeling ,  p.  142. 


Introduction 


7 


positive  contributions  of  modern  science  to  the  ideal  in¬ 
terests,  and  face  the  difficulties  felt  in  the  evolution  point 
of  view. 

The  psychological  approach — as  a  particularly  signifi¬ 
cant  part  of  the  general  scientific  approach — should  sug¬ 
gest  the  great  practical  and  ideal  inferences  from  modern 
psychology,  and  deal  with  the  questions  arising  from 
behavioristic  psychology. 

The  value  approach  should  indicate  the  significant,  uni¬ 
fied  way  into  all  the  great  values  of  life,  bringing  out  thus 
the  unity  of  all  these  values,  and  the  way  to  constantly 
enriching  life,  personal  and  social. 

The  personal  and  ethical  approach  points  out  the  su¬ 
preme  significance  both  for  morals  and  religion  of  the 
principle  of  reverence  for  personality,  as  the  basis  for 
both  a  true  individualism  and  a  true  socialism. 

The  philosophical  approach — for  philosophy  is  the 
primary  interpreter  of  the  facts  which  science  in  the 
broadest  sense  brings  us — attempts  to  put  into  brief 
compass  the  fundamental  philosophical  points  of  view, 
especially  as  concerns  religion,  and  to  face  the  philo¬ 
sophical  difficulties  for  the  religious  viewpoint,  just  now 
most  felt. 

The  Biblical  and  Christian  approach  takes  up  the  pres¬ 
ent-day  obstacles  to  a  Christian  philosophy  of  life,  gath¬ 
ering  especially  about  the  Scriptures  and  other  religious 
viewpoints,  and  strives  to  bring  out  the  wholeness  of 
Christ’s  vision  of  life,  and  his  abiding  significance  for  the 


CHAPTER  I 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  APPROACH 
I 

We  need  to  be  clear,  to  begin  with,  exactly  what  the 
viewpoint  of  modern  science  is. 

In  the  first  place,  the  growth  and  triumphs  of  modern 
science  are  due  in  no  small  degree  to  the  threefold  self¬ 
restriction  of  its  field: 1  the  restriction  to  phenomena, 
“the  thing  as  it  appears,”  abandoning  all  attempt  to 
reach  ultimate  reality;  the  restriction  to  the  tracing  of 
purely  immediate  causal  connections,  to  the  question  of 
the  How,  not  the  Why,  to  process  not  meaning;  the 
restriction  to  experience,  abandoning  all  a  priori  deter¬ 
mination.  These  three  self-restrictions  of  modern  science, 
strictly  defined,  mean  that  modern  science  turns  over  all 
questions  of  ultimate  reality,  all  questions  of  ultimate 
origins ,  all  questions  of  final  meaning  to  Philosophy  or 
Theology  or  some  other  form  of  ideal  view. 

This  delimitation  of  the  field  of  modern  science  illus¬ 
trates  and  carries  with  it  also  the  conception  of  the  scien¬ 
tific  spirit.  For  the  restriction  to  experience  will  yield 
results  only  in  the  degree  in  which  one  is  absolutely  true  to 
experience.  The  scientific  spirit  so  required,  therefore, 
may  be  said  to  be  the  habitual  determination  to  see  the 
facts  straight,  without  bias  or  prejudice;  to  report  ex¬ 
actly  the  phenomena  so  found;  and  in  the  whole  experi- 

JCf.  Lotze,  Microcosmus,  Vol.  II,  pp.  342  ff. ;  Thomson,  Outline 
of  Science,  pp.  1172-1175. 


8 


9 


The  Scientific  Approach 

ence  to  give  an  absolutely  honest  reaction  upon  the  situ¬ 
ation  under  examination.  It  is  a  rigorous  ideal,  only 
partially  attainable  at  best,  and  we  shall  need  to  return 
to  it  again. 

The  field  and  spirit  of  modern  science  naturally  lead 
on  to  the  scientific  method.  Its  essence  is  in  accurate 
observation  and  directed  experiment ;  but  it  needs  a  fuller 
characterization,  if  it  is  to  be  clearly  understood.  The 
scientific  method  may  be  said  to  begin  in  accurate  obser¬ 
vation  of  the  phenomenon  under  examination,  to  get  at 
the  raw  facts ;  to  go  on  by  sagacious  analysis  to  a  pre¬ 
liminary  classification  of  similar  data ;  to  discern  the 
forms  of  behavior  of  these  classified  groups ;  so  to  frame 
an  hypothesis  that  aims  to  include  all  the  facts ;  then  to 
verify  and  to  develop  this  hypothesis  by  directed  experi¬ 
ment  (or  to  find  that  the  hypothesis  must  be  abandoned)  ; 
to  get  at,  thus,  the  laws  which  are  found  to  hold  for  the 
phenomenon  investigated ;  to  perceive  the  conditions  in¬ 
volved  in  these  laws ;  to  fulfill  these  conditions ;  and  so  to 
be  able  to  come  to  practical  mastery  of  the  forces  and 
resources  of  the  field  under  investigation. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  this  conception  of  modern  science 
does  not  at  all  confine  it  to  the  physical  sciences.  The 
whole  viewpoint — field,  spirit,  method — may  be  applied, 
as  we  shall  see,  to  any  sphere  of  human  experience — to 
psychology,  to  history,  to  the  study  of  social  phenomena, 
to  the  history  of  religions,  etc, 

ii 

With  such  a  view  of  modetn  science,  we  naturally  begin 
with  the  scientific  approach  to  our  entire  problem,  for 
several  reasons. 

First  of  all,  our  age  is  preeminently  a  scientific  agey  and 


10  Seeing  Life  Whole 

has  been  particularly  influenced  by  scientific  conceptions. 
Moreover,  many  of  the  most  difficult  questions  for  the 
ideal  interests,  and  especially  for  religion,  rise  right  out 
of  modern  science  and  its  evolutionary  point  of  view. 

Modern  science,  too,  deals  with  one  of  the  two  great 
all-inclusive  problems  of  understanding  the  world  in  its 
entirety ,  which  we  need  to  have  clearly  in  mind  from  the 
start.  For  there  are  two  questions  which  may  always  be 
asked  concerning  any  phenomenon:  First,  How  did  it 
come  to  be? — the  question  of  process,  of  immediate  causal 
connection,  of  mechanical  explanation — the  question  of 
science;  second,  What  does  it  mean? — the  question  of 
meaning,  of  ideal  interpretation — the  question  of  philoso¬ 
phy,  and  of  all  the  ideal  interests.  Take,  for  example, 
Paulsen’s  illustration  of  a  printed  page,  or  Lotze’s  illus¬ 
tration  of  a  drama.  Concerning  each,  two  all-inclusive 
questions  may  be  asked:  How  did  it  come  to  be?  What 
does  it  mean? — the  question  of  process  and  the  question 
of  meaning.  Concerning  the  printed  page  we  may  ask  all 
the  questions  involved  in  the  process  of  its  production — 
questions  of  paper  making,  of  typesetting-machine,  of 
manufacture  and  working  of  the  printing  press,  of  the 
mechanical  preparation  of  the  “copy”  for  the  page,  etc. 
These  are  entirely  proper  and  important  questions,  but 
after  they  have  all  been  asked,  there  is  another  entirely 
different  question  to  ask:  What  does  the  page  mean,  what 
were  the  ideas  wThich  the  writer  had  in  mind  in  the  prepa¬ 
ration  of  his  copy,  what  meaning  did  he  intend  to  convey 
to  his  readers?  The  answer  to  the  question  of  process 
does  not  at  all  answer  the  question  of  meaning.  In  like 
manner,  one  may  know  all  the  mysteries  of  stage  ma¬ 
chinery  and  production  from  first  to  last,  and  have  no 
answer  to  the  question  of  the  meaning  of  the  drama  so 
staged — of  the  idea  or  impression  the  dramatist  meant  to 


11 


The  Scientific  Approach 

get  over  the  footlights  to  those  who  witnessed  his  play. 
So  everywhere  in  scientific  research — in  physics,  chem¬ 
istry,  biology,  etc. — science,  if  it  truly  confines  itself  to 
the  field  of  science,  is  dealing  solely  with  questions  of 
fact  and  process,  leaving  the  question  of  meaning  to  the 
ideal  viewpoints.  Philosophy  and  religion,  on  the  other 
hand,  as  such,  have  nothing  to  do  with  these  questions  of 
fact  and  process.  All  these  data  they  take  from  science 
and  undertake  the  interpretation  of  their  meaning.2 

Now  both  these  questions — of  process  and  meaning — 
are  essential,  and  neither  in  any  way  excludes  the  other; 
rather  are  they  naturally  supplementary,  and  not  con¬ 
flicting.  But  the  first  question — that  of  process — is  much 
the  simpler,  is  necessarily  preliminary,  and  can  be  clearly 
discriminated  from  the  other  question — that  of  meaning. 
Our  whole  problem  will  be  helped  by  sharply  distinguish¬ 
ing  from  the  beginning  these  two  questions  and  points  of 
view  in  all  our  preliminary  inquiries ;  although  we  may 
not  stop  finally  with  an  ultimate  dualism  here.  But  the 
philosophical  problem  of  unifying  both  points  of  view 
plainly  belongs  more  appropriately  to  the  philosophical 
approach  to  our  entire  problem. 

m 

In  turning  now  to  the  contributions  of  modern  science 
to  the  ideal  interests ,  it  is  worth  noting,  in  the  first  place, 
how  the  scientific  and  the  ideal  points  of  view  tend  to  fit 
into  each  other ;  for  that  will  give  us  hope  of  a  final  solu¬ 
tion  of  the  relations  of  modern  science  and  the  ideal  in¬ 
terests. 

We  may  well  take  for  our  starting-point  Herrmann’s 
definition  of  the  moral  law,  as  an  idealist’s  definition  of  the 
9Cf.  Thomson,  Outline  of  Science,  pp.  1175-1179, 


12 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

ideal:  “Mental  and  spiritual  fellowship  among  men  and 
mental  and  spiritual  independence  on  the  part  of  the 
individual — that  is  what  we  can  ourselves  recognize  to  be 
prescribed  to  us  bj  the  moral  law.” 3  But  while  this 
definition  of  the  moral  law  is,  as  has  been  said,  an  ideal¬ 
ist’s  definition  of  the  ideal,  it  still  can  be  seen  to  express 
the  essence  of  the  scientific  spirit  and  method.  For  on 
the  one  hand,  Herrmann  expresses  for  workers  in  the 
ideal  realms  what  is  essentially  the  method  of  Christ — the 
method  of  fellowship  and  independence,  the  method  of  the 
contagion  of  the  good  life,  of  the  life  sound  at  the  core,  of 
salt  that  has  not  lost  its  saltness,  of  light  that  has  not 
gone  out.  At  the  same  time  he  is  also  expressing  the 
essential  method  for  workers  in  science,  with  its  demand 
for  the  open  mind  and  absolute  fidelity  to  the  facts,  cor¬ 
responding  to  mental  and  spiritual  independence  on  the 
one  hand;  and  its  use  of  world-wide  cooperation  among 
scientific  workers,  corresponding  to  mental  and  spiritual 
fellowship  on  the  other  hand. 

Let  one  think,  for  example,  of  the  way  in  which  any 
scientific  discovery,  like  that  of  the  Roentgen  rays,  is 
tested  and  developed.  As  soon  as  the  discovery  was  an¬ 
nounced  probably  the  great  majority  of  laboratories  all 
over  the  world,  which  were  equipped  for  this  particular 
investigation,  repeated  Roentgen’s  experiments  to  test 
the  accuracy  of  his  statements,  and  to  see  if  further 
significant  facts  might  be  discovered  in  this  new  realm. 
This  is  the  method  of  cooperative  fellowship  in  the  pursuit 
of  the  truth.  At  the  same  time,  if  this  wide-spread  repe¬ 
tition  of  the  experiments  of  Roentgen  were  to  be  anything 
more  than  mere  mechanical  repetition,  it  was  necessary 
that  the  experiments  should  be  performed  as  critically 
as  by  Roentgen  himself  in  his  original  discovery.  Each 
*  Faith  and  Morals,  p.  129. 


13 


The  Scientific  Approach 

investigator  must  be  able  honestly  to  testify  out  of  his 
own  experience  to  the  confirmation  of  Roentgen’s  results. 
This  is  the  method  of  independence .  The  very  fact  that 
an  idealist’s  definition  of  the  ideal  can  be  thus  taken  as 
expressing  at  the  same  time  the  essence  of  the  scientific 
spirit  and  method,  suggests  at  least  the  possibility  of 
much  closer  and  more  harmonious  relations  between  mod¬ 
ern  science  and  the  ideal  interests  than  men  have  com¬ 
monly  supposed. 

Moreover,  modern  science  is  perhaps  the  sphere  of 
man’s  completest  success  in  mastering  those  great  ideal 
tasks  which  the  mind  sets  itself — the  tasks  of  thinking  the 
world  through  into  unity  in  various  kinds  of  terms. 
Modern  science  has  succeeded  in  solving  in  unusual  degree 
one  of  these  tasks — that  of  thinking  the  world  through 
into  unity  in  mathematico-mechanical  terms.  And  the 
very  fact  that  men  have  succeeded  at  this  one  point  gives 
hope,  as  James  suggests,4  of  increasing  success  in  those 
other  parallel  tasks  which  the  mind  sets  itself,  of  thinking 
the  world  through  into  unity,  for  example,  in  esthetic  and 
ethical  and  religious  terms. 

In  all  this  interworking  of  the  scientific  and  the  ideal, 
what  now  has  modern  science  definitely  to  contribute  to 
the  ideal  interests? 

First  of  all,  it  is  to  be  seen  that  modern  science  has 
enormously  increased  the  resources  available  for  the  ideal 
interests , — resources  of  knowledge,  of  power,  and  of 
wealth.  It  is  literally  true  to  say,  in  the  light  of  the  tri¬ 
umphs  of  modern  science,  that  one  can  set  no  limit  to 
achievements  that  may  still  be  made  in  all  these  three 
realms, — in  knowledge,  in  power,  in  wealth.  Because  of 
what  modern  science  has  here  done,  possibilities  are  now 
reasonably  within  reach  which  were  hardly  dreamed  of 
4  Psychology,  Vol.  II,  p.  671. 


14 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

earlier.  In  spite  of  defective  distribution,  men  can  look 
forward  with  hope  to  the  abolition  of  paralyzing  ignor¬ 
ance,  of  hopeless  drudgery,  and  of  inevitable  deficit, — 
to  a  time  when  a  man’s  life  shall  be  possible  for  every  man. 
But  great  as  the  resources  are  which  modern  science  can 
make  available,  we  need  to  remember  that  what  modern 
science  here  offers  is  simply  possibilities,  not  basic  as¬ 
surance.  Whether  these  possibilities  are  to  become  actual 
realities  depends  on  the  honest  cooperative  work  of  many 
groups  of  men. 

In  these  possibilities,  then,  modern  science  brings  a 
great  challenge  to  the  ideal  interests ,  and  particularly  to 
education.  It  confronts  our  age  with  questions  like  these: 
Can  you  rise  to  these  possibilities?  Are  you  training  men 
worthy  of  these  stupendous  powers  and  trusts,  or  have 
these  come  too  soon?  Is  discipline  keeping  pace  with 
democracy?  In  all  this  an  especial  challenge  is  brought 
to  education  and  to  all  the  moral  and  religious  forces. 
For  an  age  preeminent  in  power  and  wealth  must  be  also 
preeminent  in  self-control  or  world  disaster  impends.  And 
this  means  in  turn  that  it  belongs  to  the  ideal  forces  to 
make  sure  that  men  are  filled  with  interests  and  enthusi¬ 
asms  great  enough  and  ideal  enough  to  dominate  all  the 
resources  of  knowledge  and  power  and  wealth  which 
science  makes  available.  Men  caught  glimpses,  at  any 
rate  in  the  Great  War,  of  the  tremendous  possibilities  of 
cooperation  even  in  great  international  projects,  and  we 
cannot  remain  satisfied  to  have  scrapped  all  such  in¬ 
spiring  cooperation.  We  must  not  finally  fail  to  carry 
over  into  the  tasks  of  peace  some,  at  least,  of  the  great 
cooperative  constructive  agencies  which  the  war  forced 
upon  us. 

Moreover,  it  is  not  less  important  to  see  that  modern 
science  has  given  to  the  ideal  interests  the  vision  of  a  far 


The  Scientific  Approach  15 

larger  and  more  significant  world? — a  world  infinitely 
enlarged,  scientifically  unified,  constantly  evolving,  imma 
nently  law-abiding, — a  world  that  constitutes  an  organic 
whole.  In  every  one  of  these  ways,  the  world  has  become 
a  new  and  glorified  world.  It  is  impossible  to  overstate 
the  greatness  of  the  opportunity  which  modern  science,  in 
this  vision  of  a  new  world,  has  given  to  men  inspired  with 
the  ideal  spirit.  So  far  is  this  new  world — enlarged,  uni¬ 
fied,  evolving,  law-abiding,  organic — from  belittling  man, 
it  rather  reflects  its  glory  back  upon  man  at  every  point. 
For  the  vision  is  one  of  his  own  creation  and  every  new 
discernment  is  at  the  same  time  a  disclosure  of  possible 
power.  The  vision  of  such  a  world  means  not  less  than 
this, — the  possibility  for  all  men  of  entering  intelligently 
and  unselfishly  into  the  world-life  and  into  the  all-em¬ 
bracing  plans  of  God.  It  was  this  ideal  contribution  of 
modern  science  of  which  Eucken  was  thinking,  when  he 
wrote  of  science:  “Its  effect  is  not  exhausted  in  the  abun¬ 
dance  of  particular  achievements;  by  the  objectivity  of 
its  work  it  has  brought  the  world  much  nearer  to  us,  has 
led  our  life  to  greater  clearness,  has  made  us  more  alert, 
and  given  us  a  secure  dominion  over  things.  Science, 
therefore,  must  also  be  a  factor  in  the  determination  of  a 
philosophy  of  life,  and  must  raise  the  whole  position  of 
man.”  6 

Once  more,  then,  in  the  light  of  all  its  conquests  over 
external  nature,  modern  science  points  the  ideal  in¬ 
terests  to  the  one  great  method  of  scientific  mastery  over 
the  forces  of  nature ,  now  conceived  in  their  widest  scope ; 
and  so  gives  hope  of  constantly  enlarging  achievements  in 
all  the  realms  of  man’s  experience  and  endeavor. 

The  significance  of  the  gift  of  modern  science  at  this 

flCf.  King,  Religion  as  Life,  pp.  178-184. 

•  Life's  Basis  and  Life's  Ideal,  p.  345. 


16 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

point  may  be  seen  in  the  contrast  between  the  oriental 
and  the  occidental  sense  of  law.  For  the  Oriental,  law 
means  only  an  all-embracing  fate,  tending  to  paralyze  all 
effort;  for  the  Occidental,  it  means  discernment  of  the 
laws  of  the  universe,  and  so  a  key  to  the  mastery  of  its 
forces.  For  men  must  bring  to  the  complex  problems  of 
individual  and  social  development  and  progress  the  same 
method  of  scientific  mastery  which  has  so  splendidly 
served  them  in  the  conquest  of  the  forces  of  external  na¬ 
ture — so  far  as  it  can  be  here  applied.  This  is  the 
significance  of  the  “social  survey”  in  our  attempt  to  mas¬ 
ter  sociological  problems.  It  is  the  interpenetration  of 
the  scientific  spirit  and  method  with  the  social  con¬ 
sciousness.  The  social  consciousness  sets  the  goal;  the 
scientific  spirit  and  method  indicate  the  indubitable  way 
to  the  goal.  We  study  the  field.  We  discover  the  laws 
which  are  there  at  work.  We  fulfill  the  conditions  in¬ 
volved  in  those  laws,  and  so  master  the  situation. 

It  is  not  strange  that  men  like  Wells,  and  Robinson,7 
and  Dewey,8  have  so  felt  the  spell  and  the  urge  of  what 
might  be  accomplished  in  the  betterment  of  human  so¬ 
ciety  by  a  thoroughgoing  application  of  scientific  prin¬ 
ciples,  so  victorious  in  the  realm  of  external  nature. 
Wells’  characterization  of  scientific  men,  which  Robinson 
quotes,9  naturally  suggests  high  possibilities  of  human 
progress :  “In  their  field  they  think  and  work  with  an 
intensity,  an  integrity,  a  breadth,  boldness,  patience,  thor¬ 
oughness,  and  faithfulness — excepting  only  a  few  artists 
— which  puts  their  work  out  of  all  comparison  with  any 
other  human  activity.” 

Professor  H.  S.  Nash,  as  long  ago  as  1899,  caught  this 

1  The  Mind  in  the  Making,  pp.  12-14,  48  ff. 

8  Reconstruction  in  Philosophy,  pp.  72-74,  115,  130,  211. 

8  Op.  cit.,  p.  7. 


The  Scientific  Approach  IT 

vision  and  its  ideal  significance,  and  wrote  prophetically : 
“The  supreme  problem  beginning  to  press  upon  the  mind 
and  heart  of  our  own  generation,  and  sure  to  press  with 
even  greater  insistence  and  inspiration  upon  the  mind  and 
heart  of  the  generations  following  us,  is  the  creation  of  a 
higher  type  of  terrestrial  society  ” 

“The  scientific  reason,  being  enamoured  of  the  visible  uni¬ 
verse,  must  enter  society  with  entire  conviction  and  a  resolute 
purpose.  By  all  it  holds  dear,  the  conclusion  that  terrestrial 
society  is  capable  of  indefinite  betterment  is  brought  home.” 
“Our  typical  modern,  if  he  follows  his  thoughts  down  into  a 
controlling  and  coordinating  conception,  finds  himself  driven, 
by  all  the  energy  and  prestige  of  the  visible  universe,  to  make 
human  history  the  centre  of  significance,  interest,  and  worth. 
Deepening  self-knowledge  and  strengthening  self-masterhood 
are  not  to  be  attained  except  in  communion  with  society  in 
its  full  breadth  and  scope.”  “My  ethics  must  give  me  a  con¬ 
ception  of  duty  that  shall  go  to  the  bottom  of  the  visible 
universe,  and  at  the  same  time  shall  make  me  intimate  with 
the  common  life  of  the  great  bulk  of  mankind.”  “Ethics,  fol¬ 
lowed  along  this  interior  line,  leads  without  fail  into  religion. 
To  keep  the  will  steady  and  its  temper  true,  to  keep  one’s 
footing  in  the  very  thick  of  a  society  whose  heavy  mortgage 
of  brutehood  and  incapacity  we  are  forced  by  the  broad  and 
careful  knowledge  of  our  day  to  take  clear  cognizance  of,  is 
a  task  that  cannot  be  discharged  in  full,  except  by  the  aid 
of  religion.”  10 

A  modern  editor,  Mr.  Herbert  Croly  of  The  New  Re¬ 
public ,  puts  most  compactly  a  similar  vision  of  the  possi¬ 
bility  of  “the  creation  of  a  higher  type  of  terrestrial 
society,”  as  the  pressing  problem  for  the  Christian 
church : 

“For  the  first  time  in  human  history  science  is  endowing  a 
religion  of  human  brotherhood  with  the  material  out  of  which 

10  Ethics  and  Revelation ,  pp.  154,  187-8,  48,  50. 


18 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

it  may  be  possible  to  fashion  an  art  and  discipline  of  humane 
living.”  ‘‘Up  to  date  neither  the  priests  nor  the  philosophers 
have  realized  how  much  the  reenforcement  of  religious  truth 
by  science  may  mean  for  human  fulfillment.  Modern  science 
is  using  its  new  knowledge  only  to  increase  the  control  of 
man  over  nature  and  of  some  men  over  other  men.  But  some 
day  it  will  dawn  on  Christian  ministers  and  on  lay  evangelists 
that  the  new  knowledge,  just  in  so  far  as  it  penetrates  the 
secrets  of  human  nature,  can  also  be  used  to  increase  the  con¬ 
trol  of  man  over  society  and  over  his  behavior,  being  and 
destiny.  The  larger  the  knowledge  of  human  nature,  the 
more  trustworthy  the  art  and  discipline  of  life  which  ethical 
investigators  and  inventors  can  place  at  the  disposal  of  a 
religious  community  for  the  better  realization  of  its  conviction 
of  the  sacredness  and  regeneracy  of  human  personality.  It 
will  be  the  business  of  religious  leaders  to  teach  men  how 
really  to  lead  a  good  life,  which  is  something  they  now  lack 
the  knowledge  and  the  disposition  to  do.”  10a 

Other  illustrations  of  this  method  of  scientific  mastery 
may  be  found  in  McGiffert’s  The  Rise  of  Modern  Religious 
Ideas ,  and  Ellwood’s  Reconstruction  of  Religion ,  with 
their  rich  suggestiveness  of  lines  of  intellectual  and  social 
and  religious  progress.  Though  they  are  also  quite  har¬ 
monious  with  Robinson’s  emphasis  on  “creative  thinking,” 
in  sloughing  off  false  and  hindering  views,  in  strenuously 
cultivating  the  scientific  spirit,  and  in  extending  the  ap¬ 
plication  of  the  scientific  method  to  the  problems  of 
human  progress  wherever  possible. 

But  modern  science  has  a  further  significant  contri¬ 
bution  to  make  to  the  ideal  interests  in  the  gift  of  the 
scientific  spirit  itself.  That  spirit  reflects  the  open- 
minded  humility  of  the  rigorous  self-limitation  of  modern 
science  and,  as  we  have  seen,  becomes  at  its  best  a  habitual 
determination  to  see  straight,  to  report  exactly,  to  give 
an  absolutely  honest  reaction  on  the  situation.  This 
104  The  New  Republic ,  Feb.  22,  1922,  p.  370. 


19 


The  Scientific  Approach 

means  that  the  scientific  spirit  embodies  a  passion  for 
reality  and  seeks  radical  intellectual  integrity.  It  is 
thus  a  great  moral  quality  coming  with  the  prestige  of 
the  enormous  achievements  of  modern  science.  Now  it 
would  be  difficult  indeed  to  find  a  closer  parallel  for  the 
scientific  spirit  than  the  demand  of  Jesus  for  utter  inner 
integrity  of  spirit :  “Why  even  of  yourselves,”  he  says, 
“judge  ye  not  what  is  right?”  His  constant  direct  ap¬ 
peal  to  the  reason  and  conscience  of  his  hearer,  rather 
than  to  any  external  authority,  even  his  own,  reflects  a 
similar  radical  loyalty  to  the  truth.  For  he  seeks  for  his 
disciples  insights,  convictions,  faiths,  and  decisions  which 
are  veritably  their  own,  and  not  passively  taken  over  from 
any  other.  A  close  and  effective  alliance  between  the 
scientific  and  the  ideal  interests  ought  then  to  be  possible. 

When  we  have  thus  seen  something  of  the  great  posi¬ 
tive  contributions  which  modern  science  is  making  and  can 
make  to  the  ideal  interests,  we  perceive  how  impossible  it 
is  to  regard  their  relations  as  essentially  antagonistic ; 
how  many  difficulties,  on  the  contrary,  disappear  when  we 
thus  see  our  world  problem  in  the  large;  how  much  more 
unified  our  world-view  becomes ;  and  how  real  is  the  light 
thrown  by  modern  science  upon  our  specifically  ideal  views. 

IV 

So  many  religious  people,  however,  are  feeling  just  now 
serious  difficulty  in  harmonizing  their  religious  faith  with 
the  scientific  view  of  evolution ,  that  a  brief  review  of  that 
problem  seems  demanded. 

The  difficulties  felt  are  generally  of  two  quite  different 
kinds :  the  difficulty  of  harmonizing  the  evolution  theory 
with  Biblical  statements,  and  the  difficulty  of  harmonizing 
the  scientific  presentation  of  evolution  with  common  re- 


20 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

ligious  views  of  God  and  man.  In  the  interests  of  clear¬ 
ness  and  accuracy,  it  is  desirable  distinctly  to  separate 
the  two  questions;  for  quite  different  principles  are  in¬ 
volved.  The  consideration  of  the  first  difficulty  naturally 
belongs  to  the  discussion  of  the  Biblical  approach  to  our 
entire  problem  of  a  Christian  philosophy  of  life,  and  will 
be  dealt  with  there.  The  second  difficulty  should  be  defi¬ 
nitely  faced  at  this  point.11 

It  is  natural  that  many  should  have  found  great  diffi¬ 
culty  in  making  the  transition  from  a  traditional  doctrine 
of  direct  divine  creation,  especially  of  man,  to  a  view  of 
the  gradual  development  of  all  the  world  including  plants, 
animals  and  men,  with  no  sign  of  direct  intervention  by 
God  at  any  point.  Such  a  presentation  seemed  to  lend 
itself  readily  to  a  denial  of  all  divine  purpose  in  the  world 
and  of  the  special  significance  of  man,  and  to  a  material¬ 
istic  interpretation  of  the  universe.  It  seemed  even  to 
such  fine  minds  as  those  of  Romanes  and  Huxley,  for 
example,  that  Darwin’s  setting  forth  of  evolution  meant 
simply  a  selfish  bloody  struggle  for  existence  and  drove 
one,  therefore,  to  the  abandonment  of  any  ideal  inter¬ 
pretation  of  the  world.  For  Romanes  it  seemed  that  the 
universe  had  “lost  its  soul  of  loveliness”;  for  faith  in 
God  had  gone.  And  Huxley  felt  that  any  true  human 
ethics  must  be  at  perpetual  war  with  the  ethics  of  the 
universe,  as  the  evolution  theory  disclosed  them.  When 
Darwin  added  to  his  Origin  of  Species  his  book  on  The 
Descent  of  Man ,  it  seemed  to  many  still  more  impossible 
to  harmonize  the  evolution  view  with  any  faith  in  God 
as  Father,  or  in  man,  as  a  child  of  God  and  made  in  his 
image. 

Natural,  then,  the  difficulties  were.  Were  they  also  final 
and  decisive ?  Or  was  this  to  be  another  case  where  the 
11  Cf.  King,  Reconstruction  in  Theology ,  pp.  48-60,  81-108. 


21 


The  Scientific  Approach 

difficulty  was  not  with  the  majestic  array  of  the  facts,  but 
with  a  superficial  interpretation  of  the  facts? 

A  series  of  considerations  suggests  that  religion  need 
have  no  quarrel  with  the  scientific  view  of  evolution . 

In  the  first  place,  we  may  well  remind  ourselves  again 
of  science's  threefold  self-restriction  to  phenomena,  to 
experience,  and  to  the  tracing  of  causal  connections.  For 
this  means  that  it  is  consciously  not  passing  upon  any 
ultimate  questions  of  origin  or  reality.  These  questions 
belong  to  philosophy.  Science  as  such,  thus,  can  be  no 
enemy  of  religion;  while  a  materialistic  philosophy  is  in¬ 
evitably  such  an  enemy.  It  is  a  pity  that  those  anxious 
about  religion  should  not  see  this  fact. 

In  the  second  place,  as  we  have  seen,  the  two  questions 
of  process  and  meaning  cannot  well  cross  each  other.  In 
its  setting  forth  of  evolution,  science  is  simply  dealing 
with  the  process.  What  that  process  means ,  what  ideal 
interpretation  it  will  bear,  religion  and  the  other  ideal 
interests  may  themselves  decide.  And  it  is  just  as  pos¬ 
sible  (and  much  more  reasonable)  to  put  a  religious  in¬ 
terpretation  upon  the  facts  of  the  evolutionary  process, 
as  it  is  to  put  a  materialistic  or  purely  mechanical  inter¬ 
pretation  upon  that  process.  This  possible  ideal  inter¬ 
pretation  of  evolution  has  become  much  clearer,  as  study 
of  the  evolutionary  process  has  gone  on,  and  as  men  have 
come  to  see  that  that  process  has  not  been  primarily  a 
selfish  bloody  struggle  for  existence  even  in  the  lower 
animal  series.  From  the  beginning,  as  Drummond  in¬ 
sisted,  side  by  side  with  “the  struggle  for  life”  has  gone 
on  “the  struggle  for  the  life  of  others.”  The  evolutionary 
process  becomes  thus  capable  of  an  ideal,  a  religious,  in¬ 
terpretation.  So  much  so  that  Thomson  and  Geddes  con¬ 
clude  their  study  of  evolution  with  an  emphatic  idealism:12 
u  Evolution,  pp.  246-248. 


22 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

“As  in  plants  the  species-maintaining  functions  preponder¬ 
ate  over  the  individual  ones  ...  so  the  same  preponderance 
appears  in  animals.  The  ‘self-interest’  in  which  the  utili¬ 
tarian  economists  found  the  all-sufficient  spring  of  action, 
and  which  naturalists  too  long  and  too  uncritically  adopted 
from  these  (whence  Huxley’s  ‘gladiator’s  show’),  turns  out 
to  be  enlightened  by  family  interest,  species  interest,  however 
sub-conscious.  .  .  .  That  increase  of  the  reproductive  sacrifice 
which  first  makes  the  mammal,  and  then  marks  each  of  its 
distinctive  uplifts  of  further  progress,  .  .  .  that  increase  of 
parental  care,  that  frequent  appearance  of  sociality  and  co¬ 
operation  which,  even  in  its  rudest  forms,  so  surely  secures 
the  success  of  the  species  attaining  it,  be  it  mammal  or  bird, 
insect  or  even  worm — all  these  survivals  of  the  truly  fittest, 
through  love  and  sacrifice,  sociability  and  co-operation  simple 
to  complex — need  far  other  prominence  than  they  can  pos¬ 
sibly  receive  even  by  some  mildewing  attenuation  of  the 
classic  economic  hypothesis  of  the  progress  of  the  species 
essentially  through  the  internecine  struggle  among  its  in¬ 
dividuals  at  the  margin  of  subsistence.  .  .  .  Most  briefly 
stated,  the  view  of  evolution  thus  reached  is  that  .  .  .  with 
progress  essentially  through  the  subordination  of  individual 
struggle  and  development  to  species-maintaining  ends.  The 
ideal  of  evolution  is  thus  no  gladiator’s  show,  but  an  Eden; 
and  though  competition  can  never  be  wholly  eliminated  .  .  . 
it  is  much  for  our  pure  natural  history  to  see  no  longer 
struggle,  but  love  as  ‘creation’s  final  law/  ” 

Moreover,  it  should  be  noted,  just  because  the  scien¬ 
tific  question  is  one  of  process  solely,  and  because  no  one 
thinks  of  seeing  God  at  work  in  the  changes  of  nature  like 
a  finite  creature  working  upon  things  from  without,  that 
the  process  would  look  just  the  same  to  the  observer, 
whether  he  thought  it  purely  mechanical  or  wholly  due  to 
God. 

It  is  also  true,  if  simply  the  questions  of  process  are 
left  to  science,  that  religion  has  no  reason  to  object  to  the 
fvllest  freedom  of  investigation  in  any  field.  In  any  in- 


23 


The  Scientific  Approach 

quiry  concerning  the  facts,  religion  refuses  to  settle  a 
priori  how  God  must  have  acted  in  any  given  case  in  na¬ 
ture  or  revelation,  but  turns  over  to  humble  patient  scien¬ 
tific  inquiry  how  he  did  and  does  act.  As  I  have  else¬ 
where  said:  Nor  ought  this  absolutely  untrammeled  scien¬ 
tific  investigation  to  give  anxiety  to  any  real  believer  in 
God.  For  scientific  investigation  simply  seeks  the  facts, 
and  can,  therefore,  so  far  as  it  is  successful,  only  make 
more  clear  to  us  exactly  how  God  did  proceed.  And  this, 
if  we  are  really  in  earnest  in  our  desire  to  understand  God, 
we  ought  to  be  glad  to  know.  If  to-morrow  men  were  able 
to  trace  in  the  laboratory  the  precise  steps  by  which  the 
living  arises  from  the  non-living,  no  ideal  or  religious  in¬ 
terest  would  be  in  any  manner  affected,  except  that  we 
should  simply  understand  a  little  more  fully  the  method 
God  took  in  a  case  in  which  the  mode  of  his  action  is  to  us 
now  quite  obscure.  We  are  continually  in  danger  of  as¬ 
suming  that  vital  religious  interests  are  at  stake  in  the 
decision  of  questions  of  mere  process ;  whereas  religion  is 
primarily  concerned  only  with  meaning.13 

In  the  whole  question  of  scientific  evolution,  therefore, 
just  because  it  is  simply  a  question  of  process,  the  re¬ 
ligious  man  should  see  that  it  becomes,  from  the  religious 
point  of  view,  only  a  question  of  the  method  of  creation 
which  God  actually  employed — gradual  or  sudden;  by  a 
succession  of  separate  divine  acts,  or  by  applying  in  the 
universe  as  a  whole  such  a  process  as  is  indubitably  seen 
in  the  development  of  the  oak  from  the  acorn,  or  in  the 
growth  of  an  individual  human  being  from  the  germ. 
The  religious  man  is  not  primarily  concerned  about  the 
method  of  creation  at  all.  He  sees  God  as  the  creative 
source  of  all  in  any  case,  and  he  is  sure  with  Lotze  that 
“whichever  way  of  creation  God  may  have  chosen,  in  none 
u  Reconstruction  in  Theology,  pp.  49-50. 


24 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

can  the  dependence  of  the  universe  on  Him  become  slacker, 
in  none  be  drawn  closer.”  14 

Whatever  the  method  of  creation,  too,  man  is  just  as 
truly  made  in  “ the  image  of  God”  because  he  is  what  he 
is,  possessed  of  spiritual  qualities  akin  to  God.  Surely 
the  image  of  God  in  man  does  not  depend  on  some  par¬ 
ticular  manner  of  body-building.  Indeed,  if  there  is  any 
difference  in  significance  in  the  place  given  to  man,  in  the 
two  methods  of  conceiving  creation,  it  might  well  be 
claimed  that  the  facts  which  have  led  to  the  evolution  point 
of  view,  with  its  millennia  of  preparation  for  man,  give  the 
greater  glory  to  man.  For  the  evolution  view  means  that 
in  the  age-long  development  of  the  world,  a  creature  is 
finally  reached  in  man  who  is  capable  of  endless  growth 
in  knowledge,  in  power,  in  character,  in  fellowship  with 
the  living  God — a  creature  of  whom  it  might  most  fit¬ 
tingly  be  said  that  he  was  made  in  “the  image  of  God”; 
a  creature  worthy  of  the  untold  ages  which  have  gone 
to  his  making. 

Nor  does  man’s  lowly  origin,  on  the  evolution  theory,  in 
any  way  determine  man’s  value.  Science  itself  had  very 
humble  beginnings,  but  its  present  achievements  are  not 
lessened  thereby.  In  no  case  does  origin  determine  value. 
It  is  shallow  reasoning  that  so  supposes.  Man  is  what 
he  is,  not  what  he  was.  Nor  as  a  matter  of  fact  does  the 
creation  of  man  through  a  long  evolution  of  life  give  man 
a  lowlier  origin  than  direct  creation  from  “the  dust  of 
the  ground.”  From  the  religious  point  of  view,  the  dig¬ 
nity  and  worth  of  man  lie  in  any  case  in  God’s  purpose 
concerning  him,  and  that  purpose  is  not  affected  by  the 
particular  method  of  his  working. 

It  is  also  worth  careful  heeding  that  in  truth  there  are 
no  other  or  greater  difficulties  involved  for  religion  in  the 
14  Microcosmus,  Vol.  I,  p.  374. 


25 


The  Scientific  Approach 

evolution  of  the  world  and  of  the  human  race  than  in  the 
freely  recognized  development  of  the  individual  man  from 
the  germ .  For  the  individual  human  embryo  passes 
through  many  of  the  stages  from  the  lowest  animal  to  the 
highest  human  stage.  There  is  no  sign  of  external  in¬ 
tervention  at  any  point.  No  sharp  lines  can  be  drawn 
between  the  stages  passed  through,  and  yet  manifestly 
profound  differences  do  come  in,  in  the  development  of 
the  individual.  In  the  evolution  view,  we  are  simply 
recognizing  the  same  facts  in  the  development  of  the  race 
as  are  well  recognized  in  the  case  of  the  individual.  Due 
weight  has  seldom  been  given  to  this  parallel  between  the 
development  of  the  individual  and  the  evolution  of  the 
race;  for,  as  Schmid  has  clearly  pointed  out,15  44  The  idea 
of  a  development  of  species,  and  also  of  man,  does  not 
offer  to  theistic  reasoning  any  new  or  any  other  difficul¬ 
ties  than  those  which  have  been  long  present  (in  the  case 
of  the  individual),  and  which  had  found  their  solution  in 
the  religious  consciousness  long  before  any  idea  of  evolu¬ 
tion  disturbed  the  mind.’  ”  16 

It  is  important,  too,  in  thinking  of  the  religious  bear¬ 
ings  of  evolution,  to  see  that  evolution  means  real  evolu¬ 
tion,  a  succession  of  stages — in  general  genuinely  pro¬ 
gressive — with  new  phenomena  and  new  laws  on  each  stage. 
This  is  the  heart  of  the  ideal  contention  concerning  evolu¬ 
tion — the  real  appearance  of  the  new,  as  the  evolution 
goes  on.  It  is,  therefore,  a  crude  misunderstanding  of 
evolution  to  suppose  that  it  puts  everything  on  a  level, 
and  in  particular  that  it  puts  man  on  the  level  of  any 
lower  animals.  That  is  precisely  what  it  does  not  do. 

Religion  is  quite  unwilling,  too,  to  admit  that  increasing 
knowledge  of  the  methods  of  God’s  working  means  pro- 

“  Theories  of  Darwin,  pp.  265  ff. 

18  King,  Reconstruction  in  Theology,  pp.  86-7. 


26 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

gressive  elimination  of  God  from  the  universe .  Religion 
has  no  interest  in  insisting  upon  “gaps”  in  the  evolution 
series — the  occurrence  of  chasms  that  must  be  bridged 
by  direct  divine  intervention;  as  though  God  were  pecu¬ 
liarly  needed  at  such  points  in  world  development  and 
not  in  the  rest.  It  is,  therefore,  quite  unwilling  to  base  its 
faith  in  God  upon  such  gaps  in  the  evolution  series,  or  to 
base  its  argument  for  God  on  ignorance.  It  believes  in 
God,  upon  whom  the  whole  universe,  in  every  least  atom 
of  it,  and  in  every  humblest  spirit  of  it,  is  absolutely 
dependent.  Of  that  dependence  it  is  certain,  and  no  study 
of  the  method  of  it  can  make  it  less  certain. 

Moreover,  our  study  of  the  contributions  of  modern 
science  to  the  ideal  interests  suggests  that  we  need  not 
stop  in  a  mere  defense  of  the  evolution  point  of  view,  but 
may  expect  from  evolution  positive  gains  for  religion . 
For  the  evolution  point  of  view  gives  a  larger  view  of  the 
method,  plan  and  aim  of  God  in  the  universe;  brings  a 
great  extension  and  strengthening  of  the  old  design 
argument  by  replacing  a  multitude  of  smaller  designs 
testifying  to  intelligence  by  one  all-embracing  purpose; 
reveals  more  clearly  the  harmony  between  the  plan  of 
God  in  the  natural  world  and  his  plan  in  the  spiritual 
world ;  and  tends  to  an  enlarged  conception  of  God  in  his 
immanence  in  the  world. 

Evolution,  thus,  is  not  merely  consonant  with  a  theistic 
view  of  the  world;  it  distinctly  strengthens  such  a  view. 
As  Waggett  puts  it,  it  brought  to  theism  “a  juster 
method,”  “a  more  scientific  temper,”  and  “a  bolder  lan¬ 
guage,”  and  so  made  our  theism  more  “sufficiently  theis¬ 
tic.”  “For  science,  the  Divine  must  be  constant,  operative 
everywhere  and  in  every  quality  and  power,  in  environ¬ 
ment  and  in  organism,  in  stimulus  and  in  reaction,  in 
variation  and  in  struggle,  in  hereditary  equilibrium,  and 


27 


The  Scientific  Approach 

in  ‘the  unstable  state  of  species’ ;  equally  present  on  both 
sides  of  every  strain,  in  all  pressures  and  in  all  resistances, 
in  short  in  the  general  wonder  of  life  and  the  world.  And 
this  is  exactly  what  the  Divine  Power  must  be  for  religious 
faith.  ,  .  .  Here  again  our  theism  was  not  sufficiently 
theistic.”  17 

Evolution,  moreover,  as  the  study  of  it  has  gone  on, 
has  made  it  increasingly  evident  that  we  have  greater 
reason  than  ever  to  believe  in  intelligent  purpose  at  work 
in  the  world.  To  this  effect  Ell  wood  18  quotes  Conklin  as 
a  scientific  scholar:  “The  possibilities  are  almost  infinity 
to  one  against  the  conclusion  that  the  order  of  nature, 
the  fitness  of  environment,  and  the  course  of  progres¬ 
sive  evolution  with  all  its  marvellous  adaptations  are 
all  the  results  of  blind  chance.  ...  In  short,  science 
reveals  to  us  a  universe  of  ends  as  well  as  of  means, 
of  teleology  as  well  as  of  mechanism,  and  in  this  it  agrees 
with  the  teachings  of  philosophy  and  religion.55  19  To  like 
import  Professor  J.  Arthur  Thomson,  out  of  his  full 
knowledge  as  a  biologist,  thus  closes  his  Gifford  Lectures 
on  A  Study  of  Animate  Nature:  20  “The  general  conclu¬ 
sion  of  our  study  is  that  a  scientific  description  of  Animate 
Nature  and  its  Evolution  is  congruent  with  the  view  that 
the  whole  is  the  expression  of  an  originative  purpose.  The 
scientific  formulation  is  consistent  with  the  conclusion, 
which  must  be  reached  along  other  lines,  that  the  ‘Nature5 
we  know  intimately  may  be  interpreted  as  one  of  the 
expressions  of  the  Divine  Spirit.  No  conclusion  along  our 
lines  of  study  is  likely  to  be  within  sight  of  the  truth  that 
does  not  sound  the  note  of  joyous  admiration:  ‘Prais’d 
be  the  fathomless  Universe,  for  life  and  joy,  and  for 

17  Evolution  in  Modern  Thought,  pp.  226-232,  243. 

18  The  Reconstruction  of  Religion,  p.  134. 

“  The  Direction  of  Human  Evolution,  p.  228. 

20  Quoted  by  Davidson  in  Recent  Theistic  Discussion,  pp.  65,  56. 


28 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

objects  and  knowledge  curious.’  But  shall  we  not  rather 
seek  to  worship  the  Author  of  the  Universe — albeit  so 
imperfectly  discerned — from  whom  all  comes,  by  whom  all 
lives,  in  whom  all  ends  ?” 

And  the  poet  agrees  with  the  biologist : 

A  fire-mist  and  a  planet 
A  crystal  and  a  cell 
A  jelly-fish  and  a  saurian 

And  caves  where  cave-men  dwell; 

Then  a  sense  of  law  and  beauty, 

And  a  face  turned  from  the  clod — 

Some  call  it  evolution 

And  others  call  it  God.21 

31 W.  H.  Carruth,  Each  in  His  Own  Tongue. 


CHAPTER  II 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  APPROACH 

In  modern  psychology,  in  the  broader  sense,  men  are 
trying  to  apply  the  scientific  spirit  and  method  to  the 
study  of  man’s  own  nature  in  all  its  manifestations  and 
relations.  Just  as  in  the  study  of  external  nature  men 
have  sought  to  discover  the  laws  of  that  nature  and  so  to 
master  its  forces  and  resources ;  so  in  psychology  they 
are  seeking  to  discern  the  laws  of  man's  own  nature ,  and 
so  to  master  its  forces  and  resources.  That  concerns  all 
human  endeavor.  We  naturally  turn  next,  therefore,  in 
our  problem  of  a  Christian  philosophy  of  life,  to  the 
psychological  approach. 


i 

The  significant  breadth  of  the  more  modern  psychology , 
including  a  reasonable  emphasis  on  “behavior,”  is  clearly 
indicated  by  McDougall  and  can  hardly  be  put  more 
briefly : 

“Psychologists  must  cease  to  be  content  with  the  sterile 
and  narrow  conception  of  their  science  as  the  science  of  con¬ 
sciousness,  and  must  boldly  assert  its  claim  to  be  the  positive 
science  of  the  mind  in  all  its  aspects  and  modes  of  functioning, 
or,  as  I  would  prefer  to  say,  the  positive  science  of  conduct 
or  behaviour.  Psychology  must  not  regard  the  introspective 
description  of  the  stream  of  consciousness  as  its  whole  task, 
but  only  as  a  preliminary  part  of  its  work.  Such  intro¬ 
spective  description,  such  ‘pure  psychology,’  can  never  con- 

29 


30 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

stitute  a  science,  or  at  least  can  never  rise  to  the  level  of  an 
explanatory  science;  and  it  can  never  in  itself  be  of  any 
great  value  to  the  social  sciences.  The  basis  required  by  all 
of  them  is  a  comparative  and  physiological  psychology  relying 
largely  on  objective  methods,  the  observation  of  the  behaviour 
of  men  and  of  animals  of  all  varieties  under  all  possible  con¬ 
ditions  of  health  and  disease.  It  must  take  the  largest  possible 
view  of  its  scope  and  functions,  and  must  be  an  evolutionary 
natural  history  of  mind.  Above  all,  it  must  aim  at  providing 
a  full  and  accurate  account  of  those  most  fundamental  ele¬ 
ments  of  our  constitution,  the  innate  tendencies  to  thought  and 
action  that  constitute  the  native  basis  of  the  mind.  Happily 
this  more  generous  conception  of  psychology  is  beginning  to 
prevail.  .  .  .  On  every  hand  we  hear  it  said  that  the  static, 
descriptive,  purely  analytic  psychology  must  give  place  to  a 
dynamic,  functional,  voluntaristic  view  of  mind.  A  second 
very  important  advance  of  psychology  towards  usefulness  is 
due  to  the  increasing  recognition  of  the  extent  to  which  the 
adult  human  mind  is  the  product  of  the  moulding  influence 
exerted  by  the  social  environment,  and  of  the  fact  that  the 
strictly  individual  human  mind,  with  which  alone  the  older 
introspective  and  descriptive  psychology  concerned  itself,  is  an 
abstraction  merely  and  has  no  real  existence.”  1 

u 

Now  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  ideal  interests,  I 
think,  we  need  have  no  quarrel  with  such  a  definition  of 
psychology  as  this,  or  with  such  an  attempt  as  it  pre¬ 
supposes.  On  the  one  hand,  justice  is  done  to  the 
evolutionary,  behavioristic,  and  social  aspects  of  psychol¬ 
ogy,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  attempt  to  identify 
consciousness  with  behavior.  The  change  in  viewpoint 
and  scope  involved  does  not  necessarily  carry  with  it  any 
hostility  to  ideal  interests.  Indeed,  McDougall,  whose 
definition  I  am  using,  has  no  thought  of  denying  the  facts 
of  consciousness,  and  himself  insists  at  vital  points  on  a 

a  Social  Psychology,  11th  ed.,  pp.  15-16. 


31 


The  Psychological  Approach 

teleological  interpretation  of  the  psychological  facts.2 
It  was  inevitable  that  such  an  attempt  as  McDougall 
defines  should  be  made,  in  trying  to  show  the  dawn  and 
growth  of  mind  in  a  study  of  the  evolution  of  the  animal 
world  and  of  men.  In  truth,  “behavioristic”  psychology, 
as  thus  defined,  might  be  said  to  be  simply  an  attempt  to 
carry  to  the  farthest  possible  limit  the  conception  of 
psychology  as  an  empirical  science,  confining  its  questions 
absolutely  to  questions  of  process  and  not  of  final  mean¬ 
ing.  This  is  an  entirely  legitimate  attempt,  if  it  is  only 
recognized  as  being  just  what  it  is  and  not  something 
else. 

It  is  even  desirable  to  carry  this  point  of  view  of 
empirical  science — the  solution  of  the  question  of  process 
— as  far  as  it  can  be  carried.  No  limitations  are  to  be 
set  upon  the  inquiry  after  empirical  explanation.  This 
means,  for  example,  that  as  far  as  possible  we  shall 
express  the  facts  of  physics  in  mathematical  form,  though 
we  cannot  make  such  propositions  cover  the  entire  con¬ 
crete  reality.  It  means  that  we  must  carry  the  physical 
and  chemical  explanations  to  their  utmost  possible  limit 
in  the  study  of  life  in  biology.  It  means  that  we  must  go 
as  far  as  we  possibly  can  in  tracing  causal  connections  in 
the  stream  of  consciousness  and  in  all  physical  reactions — 
in  all  behavior.  As  Miinsterberg  3  puts  it :  “Psychology 
may  dissolve  our  will  and  our  personality  and  our  free¬ 
dom,  and  it  is  constrained  by  duty  to  do  so,  but  it  must 
not  forget  that  it  speaks  only  of  that  will  and  that  per¬ 
sonality  which  are  by  metamorphosis  substituted  for  the 
personality  and  the  will  of  real  life,  and  that  it  is  this  real 
personality  and  its  free  will  which  creates  psychology  in 
the  service  of  its  ends  and  aims  and  ideals.”  Every 

*  Social  Psychology,  p.  263. 

8  Psychology  and  Life ,  pp.  23-28. 


32  Seeing  Life  Whole 

science  is  in  this  sense  a  “child  of  duties,”  as  Miinsterberg 
cal]s  it. 

The  scientific  historian  in  like  manner  must  try  to 
carry  his  proof  of  causal  relations  as  far  as  he  possibly 
can;  though  he  may  well  conclude  in  the  end,  with  Har- 
nack,  that  biography  is  both  the  least  scientific,  and  at 
the  same  time  the  most  valuable,  history.  Inquiry,  thus, 
after  an  empirical  explanation  is  entirely  justified.  It 
will  give  a  part  of  the  facts ;  and  it  will  even  throw  more 
light  probably  in  the  end  on  the  question  of  meaning,  if 
the  world  is  a  unity  at  all. 


hi 

But  it  needs  squarely  to  be  said  that  there  is  a  type  of 
“ behaviorism ”  that  tends  directly  to  a  materialistic 
philosophy  and  that  therefore  cannot  be  harmonized  with 
an  ideal  or  religious  interpretation  of  the  world.  Pro¬ 
fessor  Pratt  has  put  this  issue  so  sharply  and  effectively 
that  I  may  well  leave  it  with  his  full  statement :  4 

“Behaviorism  originated  as  a  method  in  animal  psychology. 
Out  of  patience  with  the  futile  attempt  to  tell  what  the  animal 
was  thinking  about  or  how  it  was  feeling  when  put  through 
various  experiments,  the  investigators  in  this  field  at  length 
said,  Why  bother  our  heads  as  to  this  unanswerable  question? 
The  important  thing  for  science  is  to  know  how  the  animal 
reacts  in  the  presence  of  various  stimuli.  Let  us,  therefore, 
frankly  make  the  object  of  our  study  not  the  animal’s  hypo¬ 
thetical  consciousness  but  its  actual  behavior.  So  successful 
was  this  reorganization  of  method  in  getting  results  that  were 
truly  objective,  verifiable,  and  scientific,  that  certain  of  the 
bolder  spirits  proposed  it  should  be  applied  also  to  human 
psychology;  and  applied  it  has  been.  The  experimenter  ob¬ 
serves  the  reactions,  the  behavior,  the  physiological  processes 

4  Matter  and  Spirit,  pp.  112-13,  115,  116-17,  118. 


The  Psychological  Approach  83 

of  his  subject,  makes  objective  measurements  with  instru¬ 
ments  of  precision,  and  never  asks  for  his  subject’s  intro¬ 
spection  nor  bothers  as  to  his  consciousness.  The  objectivity 
of  these  observations  is  one  of  the  advantages  claimed  for 
the  new  method  by  its  adherents,  but  they  also  enthusiastically 
recommend  it  as  a  welcome  means  of  escaping  the  age-long 
psychophysical  problem  and  of  putting  permanently  on  the 
shelf  all  its  traditional  solutions.  .  .  . 

“The  word  Behaviorism  is  used  in  two  quite  distinct  senses. 
It  may,  on  the  one  hand,  be  taken  as  a  method  in  psychology — 
the  method,  namely,  which  refuses  to  make  any  use  of  intro¬ 
spection  or  any  reference  to  consciousness,  and  which  insists 
that  as  psychologists  we  should  study  only  bodily  reactions 
and  physiological  processes.  But  secondly  it  may  be  taken 
in  more  metaphysical  fashion;  it  may,  namely,  mean  that 
consciousness  is  behavior,  and  that  in  any  other  sense  it  simply 
does  not  exist.  .  .  . 

“Let  us,  then,  consider  Behaviorism  in  the  first  place  as 
merely  a  method  of  psychology.  .  .  .  We  may  have  our  own 
opinions  as  to  the  possibility  of  giving  a  complete  or  even  a 
very  intelligent  description  of  human  nature  by  a  method  that 
leaves  consciousness  (in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word) 
entirely  out  of  account;  but  so  long  as  the  behaviorist  sticks 
to  his  measurements  and  makes  no  statements  either  explicit 
or  implicit  concerning  consciousness  we  shall  have  nothing  to 
say,  because  his  assertions  so  far  forth  have  no  bearing  upon 
the  mind-body  problem.  But  as  a  fact,  the  behaviorist  means 
his  method  to  have  a  very  definite  bearing  upon  the  mind- 
body  problem;  it  is,  as  we  have  often  been  told,  a  means 
of  avoiding  it  altogether.  Now  so  long  as  Behaviorism  re¬ 
mains  merely  a  method  it  is  plain  that  there  is  only  one  way 
in  which  it  can  enable  us  to  avoid  this  question  of  the  relation 
of  the  psychical  to  the  physical.  This  is,  namely,  by  insisting 
that  the  psychical  has  no  relation  to  the  physical  that  is  of 
any  importance  to  science.  In  fact,  this  is  exactly  the  pre¬ 
supposition  of  Behaviorism  as  a  method.  Human  behavior,  it 
maintains,  can  be  adequately  and  completely  described  and 
explained  by  the  anatomy  and  physiology  of  the  body  and 
by  the  nature  of  the  various  physical  stimuli  that  play  upon 
it.  No  reference  to  consciousness  is  either  needed  or  in  any 
way  helpful.  .  .  . 


34 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

“On  the  question  of  the  efficiency  of  consciousness,  there¬ 
fore,  Behaviorism,  even  when  understood  only  as  a  method,  is 
obliged  to  take  exactly  the  same  position  as  Materialism. 
But  Behaviorism  cannot  take  the  position  of  Materialism  and 
avoid  its  difficulties/* 

But  even  when  a  metaphysical  behaviorism  is  entirely 
avoided,  and  psychology  is  kept  a  truly  empirical  science, 
it  needs  constantly  to  be  remembered  that  the  point  of 
view  of  empirical  science,  as  we  have  seen,  is  only  one  point 
of  view.  Side  by  side  with  the  question  of  empirical 
explanation  there  must  be  the  question  of  meaning,  the 
question  of  ideal  interpretation.  And — to  put  the  matter 
with  the  utmost  brevity — the  whole  of  reality,  the  whole 
man,  registers  its  inevitable  protest  against  making  the 
mathematico-mechanical  view  of  the  world  the  only  view; 
against  making  logical  consistency  the  sole  test  of  truth 
or  reality;  against  ignoring  all  data  except  those  which 
come  through  the  intellect  alone;  that  is,  against  trying 
to  make  a  part,  not  the  whole  of  man,  the  standard;  in 
other  words,  against  ignoring  the  data  which  come 
through  feeling  and  will — emotional,  esthetic,  ethical,  and 
religious  data — as  well  as  those  judgments  of  worth  which 
underlie  reason’s  theoretical  determinations.5 

This  is  only  to  say,  in  the  light  of  the  discussion  of 
evolution,  that  behavioristic  psychology  brings  to  the 
ideal  interests  no  new  difficulties.  It  is  still  true  that 
origin  does  not  determine  value;  that  it  is  of  the  essence 
of  evolution  that  the  new  appears  with  its  new  stages  and 
new  laws ;  that  the  prime  significance  of  the  psychical, 
side  by  side  with  the  physical,  cannot  be  denied ;  that  the 
psychological  cannot  be  forthwith  translated  into  the 
philosophical — answers  to  questions  of  process  into 
answers  to  questions  of  meaning ;  that  especially,  as  Lipp- 

6Cf.  King,  Theology  and  the  Social  Consciousness,  pp.  78-81. 


35 


The  Psychological  Approach 

mann  6  protests,  so  deterministic  a  view  of  human  conduct 
through  “interests”  is  not  to  be  taken  as  to  scout  all 
rational  guidance  of  human  progress  by  first-rate  states¬ 
men,  not  “second-best  statesmen”;  that  on  the  contrary, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  clear  gains  for  ideal  interests  are 
to  be  expected  through  the  growing  mastery  of  the  laws 
of  human  nature  and  of  social  progress. 

IV 

We  may,  indeed,  go  farther,  and  say  that  when  scien¬ 
tifically  guarded  against  a  materialistic  behaviorism,  the 
broader  conception  of  the  more  modern  psychology,  with 
its  evolution  point  of  view  and  with  its  emphasis  on  the 
functional  and  on  the  social,  makes  only  more  important 
the  great  practical  inferences  from  modern  psychology. 
So  Professor  George  M.  Stratton  answers  the  question — 
Where  has  psychology  left  religion?  7  “In  brief  it  would 
seem  to  me  proper  to  say  that  psychology  leaves  religion 
living,  with  new  means  for  its  great  work,  and  with  fresh 
confidence  in  the  naturalness  and  the  need  of  the  religious 
life.”  For  at  no  point  does  scientific  study  approach 
more  nearly  the  problem  of  moral  and  religious  living  than 
in  these  great  practical  inferences  from  psychology.  For 
from  the  religious  point  of  view  I  cannot  more  adequately 
define  the  goal  of  my  life  than  to  say  that  it  is  to  fulfil  the 
complete  purpose  with  which  God  called  me  into  being; 
for  the  essence  of  anything  is  best  expressed  in  terms  of 
purpose.  To  state  the  essence  of  a  machine,  for  example, 
cannot  be  done  by  mechanical  enumeration  and  descrip¬ 
tion  of  its  parts,  but  only  by  indicating  what  it  is  for, 
what  it  was  meant  to  be.  So,  if  I  could  know  the  full 

°Yale  Review ,  July,  1922,  pp.  673  ff. 

7  The  Journal  of  Religion ,  January,  1923. 


36 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

purpose  of  God  in  calling  me  into  being — the  will  of  God 
for  me — I  should  thus  know  the  goal  of  my  life. 

Now,  from  the  fundamentally  Christian  point  of  view 
the  will  of  God  is  chiefly  revealed  in  two  ways :  first,  in  the 
laws  of  man’s  nature,  which  religion  must  conceive  as  the 
creation  of  God,  and  so  as  manifesting  something  at  least 
of  the  will  of  God  concerning  man ;  and,  second,  in  the  life 
and  teaching  of  Christ,  whom  Christianity  conceives  as  the 
supreme  revelation  of  God. 

This  means,  in  the  first  place,  that  men  are  to  discern 
and  obey  the  laws  involved  in  their  own  nature — the  laws 
of  life  individual  and  social.  Huxley’s  famous  definition 
of  education  takes  exactly  this  point  of  view :  “Education 
is  the  instruction  of  the  intellect  in  the  laws  of  Nature — 
under  which  name  I  include  not  merely  things  and  their 
forces,  but  men  and  their  ways ;  and  the  fashioning  of  the 
affections  and  will  into  an  earnest  and  loving  desire  to 
move  in  harmony  with  those  laws.”  The  point  of  view  is 
as  simple  and  basic  as  is  the  common-sense  method  of 
dealing  with  a  fine  automobile.  As  surely  as  one  will  get 
the  most  out  of  such  a  machine  by  following  carefully  the 
directions  of  the  manufacturer,  so  surely  will  he  get  the 
most  out  of  his  own  being,  by  knowing  and  obeying  its 
laws. 

Similarly,  in  the  second  place,  if  the  Christian  point  of 
view  is  right  in  finding  the  supreme  revelation  of  the  will 
of  God  in  history’s  supreme  personality,  then  men  are  also 
to  build  on  the  revelation  of  the  will  of  God  in  the  life  and 
teaching  of  Jesus . 

And  if  the  will  of  God — the  moral  and  religious  goal  of 
life — is  to  be  found  in  these  two  ways,  the  two  ways  ought 
fundamentally  to  agree — the  great  practical  inferences 
from  modern  psychology,  and  the  Christian  ideals.  But 
the  suggestiveness  and  helpfulness  of  such  agreement 


The  Psychological  Approach  37 

depend  upon  an  absolutely  honest  use  of  each  line  of 
thought.  We  begin  with  the  inferences  from  psychology. 

v 

The  moral  and  religious  significance  of  the  great  prac¬ 
tical  inferences  from  modern  psychology  may  be  briefly 
indicated  here.8 9 

In  my  Rational  Living  9  I  have  pointed  out  that  there 
seem  to  me  to  be  four  great  inferences  from  modern 
psychology ,  and  each  with  suggestions  for  life  and  char¬ 
acter — that  is,  with  direct  suggestion  of  the  conditions  of 
growth,  of  character,  of  happiness,  and  of  influence.  And 
these  inferences  seem  to  me  to  be  only  further  emphasized 
by  later  psychological  developments.  These  four  great 
inferences  are:  life  is  complex;  man  is  a  unity;  will  and 
action  are  of  central  importance ;  and  the  real  is  concrete. 
In  other  words,  modern  psychology  has  four  great  empha¬ 
ses  ;  for  it  may  be  said  to  urge  upon  us  the  recognition  of 
the  multiplicity  and  intricacy  of  the  relations  everywhere 
confronting  us ;  of  the  essential  unity  of  the  relations 
involved  in  our  own  nature,  the  unity  of  the  mind  and  the 
unity  of  mind  and  body;  of  the  fact  that  this  unity 
demands  action  and  is  best  expressed  in  action ;  and  that 
we  are,  thus,  everywhere  shut  out  from  resting  in  abstrac¬ 
tions  and  must  find  reality  only  in  the  concrete. 

Manifestly  these  contentions  are  all  closely  interwoven , 
and  they  may  even  be  regarded  as  all  summed  up  in  the 
last — as  asserting  the  interrelatedness  of  all.  For  if  only 

8  For  a  full  statement  of  these  inferences  see  King,  Rational 
Living.  For  a  brief,  direct  putting  of  psychological  help  in  the 
problem  of  character,  see  King,  “How  to  Make  a  Rational  Fight 
for  Character,”  in  Personal  and  Ideal  Elements  in  Education,  pp. 
236-272. 

9Pp.  3-4. 


33 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

the  concrete  is  real,  then  life  is,  in  the  first  place,  no 
abstraction  or  series  of  abstractions,  but  rich  and  complex 
beyond  all  formulation.  In  this  complexity,  secondly,  no 
sharp  lines  can  be  drawn,  all  is  interwoven;  the  life  of 
man,  therefore,  is  a  unity — body  and  mind.  But  all 
experiences,  bodily  and  mental,  tend  to  terminate  in 
action,  in  which  alone  the  whole  man  is  seen;  will  and 
action,  then,  are  of  central  importance.  The  four  propo¬ 
sitions  tend  thus  to  fall  together.  And  they  all  put 
emphasis  on  seeing  life  whole. 

A  brief  summary  may  be  made  of  the  practical  sugges¬ 
tions  coming  from  these  four  great  inferences. 

From  the  first  inference  comes  the  necessity  of  a  store 
of  permanent  and  valuable  interests — one  of  the  great 
ends  of  education  and  of  all  growth — and  of  realizing  that 
life  is  completely  interrelated  in  all  its  parts,  and  cannot 
be  sharply  divided  off  nor  summed  up  in  short  and  simple 
formulas ;  but  rather  has  its  constant  paradoxes  which 
we  cannot  safely  ignore.  It  is  this  complexity  which 
Lecky  has  in  mind  in  his  Map  of  Life ,  in  what  he  calls 
“the  importance  of  compromise  in  practical  life.”  And 
it  is  this  upon  which  James  is  insisting  also,  when  he  urges 
“the  reinstatement  of  the  vague  and  inarticulate  to  its 
proper  place  in  our  mental  life.” 

The  second  great  inference  contends  that  we  must  keep 
constantly  in  mind  the  unity  of  man’s  nature,  and  recog¬ 
nizes  that  we  cannot  tear  ourselves  down  at  one  point  and 
leave  the  rest  of  our  life  unaffected,  and  that  real  educa¬ 
tion,  on  the  other  hand,  anywhere  is  education  everywhere. 
It  demands  that  all  sides  of  man’s  nature  are  to  be  taken 
into  account.  It  suggests,  too,  the  importance  of  remem¬ 
bering  the  mutual  influence  of  body  and  mind. 

The  third  great  inference ,  the  central  importance  of  will 
and  action,  indicates  that  work — adequate  expressive 


39 


The  Psychological  Approach 

activity — is  one  of  the  greatest  means  to  character,  in¬ 
fluence  and  happiness  alike;  as  the  mood  of  work — the 
objective,  self-forgetful  mood — is  a  prime  condition  of  the 
finest  living. 

The  fourth  inference  gives  a  like  emphasis  to  the 
personal  and  social  everywhere,  to  personal  association  as 
the  greatest  of  all  means  for  largeness  of  life,  and  to 
respect  for  personality,  including  self-respect  and  respect 
for  others,  as  the  supreme  condition  of  all  fine  personal 
relations. 

If  I  am  right  in  these  four  great  inferences,  they 
directly  suggest,  as  laws  of  our  own  natures,  the  funda¬ 
mental  means  and  spirit  required  for  education,  for 
growth,  for  all  true  living.  For  the  great  means 
required  10  for  these  all-inclusive  ends  are,  first,  a  life 
sufficiently  complex  to  give  acquaintance  with  the  great 
fundamental  facts  of  the  world,  on  the  one  hand,  and  to 
call  out  the  entire  man,  on  the  other;  second,  the  com- 
pletest  possible  expressive  activity  on  the  part  of  the 
growing  individual;  and  third,  personal  association  with 
broad  and  wise  and  noble  lives.  And  the  corresponding 
spirit  demanded  for  all  true  life  and  growth  must  be,  first, 
broad  and  catholic  in  both  senses — as  responding  to  a 
wide  range  of  interests,  on  the  one  hand,  and  looking  to  the 
all-round  development  of  the  individual,  on  the  other  hand ; 
second,  objective  rather  than  self-centred  and  introspec¬ 
tive;  and  third,  imbued  with  the  fundamental  convictions 
of  the  social  consciousness.  Psychology  seems  to  make 
clear  that  these  are  always  the  greatest  and  the  alone 
indispensable  means  and  conditions  in  training  for  life,  and 
they  contain  in  themselves  the  great  sources  of  character, 
of  happiness,  and  of  influence.  The  supreme  opportunity, 
in  other  words,  that  life  offers  at  its  best,  is  opportunity 
10  King,  Personal  and  Ideal  Elements  in  Education,  pp.  1-70. 


40 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

to  use  one’s  full  powers  in  a  wisely  chosen,  complex 
environment,  in  association  with  the  best — and  all  this  in 
an  atmosphere  catholic  in  its  interests,  objective  in  spirit 
and  method,  and  democratic,  unselfish,  and  finely  reverent 
in  its  personal  relations. 


VI 

Now  these  fundamental  means  and  conditions  seem  to 
me  to  be  all  indubitably  Christian  emphases ,  and  to  fit 
closely  into  our  moral  and  religious  goal.  I  do  not  see 
that  Christianity  has  any  quarrel  with  these  psychological 
inferences  at  any  point,  but  may  well  believe  that  they 
come  from  the  same  God  who  revealed  himself  supremely 
in  Christ. 

For  even  the  complexity  of  life  and  the  unity  of  man's 
nature  are  strongly  felt,  for  example,  in  the  extended 
recognition,  by  the  New  Testament,  of  paradox,  especially 
the  paradox  of  saving  the  life  by  losing  it, — putting 
always  the  relative  goods  in  the  relative  place, — and  the 
paradox  of  liberty  and  law,11  with  which  not  less  than 
five  New  Testament  books  have  to  do.  The  unity  of  man’s 
spirit,  indeed,  is  one  of  the  four  fundamental  motives 
that  run  right  through  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 

In  like  manner  psychology’s  emphasis  on  expressive 
activity — on  work  calling  out  the  whole  man  as  a  great 
means  to  character,  influence,  and  happiness,  is  an  ac¬ 
curate  echo  of  the  contentions  of  Jesus:  “Not  every  one 
that  saith  unto  me,  Lord,  Lord,  shall  enter  into  the  king¬ 
dom  of  heaven;  but  he  that  doeth  the  will  of  my  Father 
who  is  in  heaven.”  “Every  one  therefore  that  heareth 
these  words  of  mine,  and  doeth  them,  shall  be  likened  unto 
a  wise  man,  who  built  his  house  upon  the  rock.”  12 

u  King,  Fundamental  Questions ,  Ch.  V. 

13  Matt.  7 :21,  24. 


The  Psychological  Approach  41 

So,  too,  psychology’s  emphasis  on  the  concrete  facts , 
on  persons,  and  on  personal  association  as  the  supreme 
means  to  character,  influence,  and  happiness,  is  paralleled 
at  every  point  by  Christ’s  contentions.  For  Christianity 
is  an  historical  religion  that  intends  above  all  not  to  rest 
on  abstract  principles,  but  to  keep  close  to  the  concrete 
reality  of  the  personality  of  Jesus.  Herrmann  is  inter¬ 
preting  accurately  Christ’s  own  view  of  life  when  he  says 
so  expressly :  “In  its  commencement  and  in  all  its  develop¬ 
ment  alike,  Christian  faith  is  nothing  else  than  trust  in 
persons  and  in  the  powers  of  personal  life.”  18  The  great 
way  in  which  the  kingdom  of  Christ  is  to  come  is  by  the 
method  of  the  contagion  of  the  good  life — the  salt  of  the 
earth — through  personal  association. 

A  like  parallel  could  be  shown  to  exist  between  the  spirit 
fundamentally  demanded  by  modern  psychology  and  the 
spirit  required  by  Christ — broad,  catholic,  objective,  self- 
forgetful,  permeated  by  reverence  for  personality. 

vn 

The  simple  truth  is  that  psychology  has  much  help  to 
give  in  bringing  in  the  fruits  of  practical  religion;  but  the 
help  must  come  chiefly  from  such  sober  fundamental 
psychological  principles  as  those  of  which  we  have  been 
speaking,  rather  than  from  the  magic  of  “new  thought,” 
of  self-hypnotism,  and  the  revelling  in  the  subconscious, — 
with  all  of  which  our  time  is  rife;  as  a  multitude  of 
advertisements  in  city  papers  bear  witness,  which  promise 
in  miraculous  fashion  to  furnish  power  and  success  to 
order  and  over-night. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  there  is  no  value  in  certain 
psychological  suggestions  particularly  stressed  just  now; 
u  The  Communion  of  the  Christian  with  God ,  p.  228. 


42 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

in  carefully  directed  selective  attention;  or  in  remember¬ 
ing  that  we  have  much  to  do  with  determining  our  own 
environment  and  our  dominant  moods ;  or,  in  somewhat 
abnormal  cases,  in  expert  analysis  of  relatively  subcon¬ 
scious  life,  in  order  to  discover  unwholesome  suppressions ; 
or  in  pointing  out  how  these  suppressions  of  natural  in¬ 
stincts  may  be  replaced  by  a  higher  use  of  them;  or  in 
clear  recognition  of  different  levels  of  energy  that  may  be 
tapped  especially  by  religion  or  by  a  great  affection. 

But  it  is  to  say  that  magic  formulas  cannot  take  the 
place  of  breadth  of  view,  of  rational  purpose,  and  of  a 
soundly  developed  personality;  that  self-hypnosis  is  not 
the  normal  road  to  high  moral  and  religious  achievement, 
and  is  often  most  deceiving — a  kind  of  intoxication  in 
which  discrimination  has  ceased ;  that  denial  of  plain 
scientific  facts  is  a  road  to  inner  dishonesty  not  to  reli¬ 
gious  faith ;  that  relying  upon  the  inspiration  of  the  sub¬ 
conscious  in  automatic  writing  does  not  promise  better  but 
poorer  results ;  for  the  higher  faculties  of  judgment  and 
self-control  are  in  abeyance.  In  other  words,  there  is  a 
kind  of  patent-medicine  use  of  supposed  principles  of 
psychology  to-day  that  is  nauseating  and  misleading. 
Professor  Dewey’s  sober  words  need  to  be  heeded: 14 

“Any  critical  appraisal  of  such  methods  as  those  of 
Coueism  seems  to  imply  lack  of  sympathy  for  those  who  are 
relieved.  Any  relief,  it  would  seem,  is  at  least  so  much  net 
gain.  But  all  cheap,  short  cuts  which  avoid  recognition  of 
basic  causes  have  to  be  paid  for  at  a  great  cost.  The  great¬ 
est  cost  is  that  palliative  and  remedial  measures  put  off  the 
day  in  which  fundamental  causal  factors  are  faced  and  con¬ 
structive  action  undertaken.  They  perpetuate  the  domination 
of  life  by  reverie,  magic,  superficiality  and  evasion;  they 
perpetuate,  that  is,  the  sickness  of  the  world.  As  long  as 
the  mind  is  set  upon  curing  we  shall  need  to  be  cured. 

14  The  New  Republic ,  January  24,  1923. 


The  Psychological  Approach  43 

Only  education  and  re-education  into  normal  conditions  of 
growth  accomplishes  anything  positive  and  enduring.”  15 

If,  then,  we  are  to  rely  only  upon  truly  fundamental 
psychological  principles  and  assured  results,  for  signifi¬ 
cant  moral  and  religious  help  from  psychology,  we  are 
perhaps  bound  to  illustrate  by  suggestion  at  least  in  a 
single  problem — that  of  self-mastery — both  the  psycho¬ 
logical  and  the  Christian  methods  of  solution, — in  order 
to  see  how  truly  they  harmonize  and  how  really  they  help. 

We  may  stop  for  a  moment  for  a  brief  consideration  of 
the  more  general  problem  of  the  psychology  of  power . 
As  James  long  ago  pointed  out,  men  have  different  levels 
of  energy  available,  far  beyond  their  normal  expenditure ; 
but  these  levels  are  not  directly  to  be  tapped  by  mere 
force  of  will.  Rather  is  it  true  that  our  most  important 
decisions  in  life  are  themselves  not  commonly  made  by  a 
“slow  dead  heave”  of  the  will,  but  in  “a  sober  and  stren¬ 
uous  mood,”  some  of  the  conditions  of  which,  personal 
and  social,  are  clear.  We  can  do  something  to  induce 
this  sober  and  strenuous  mood  through  attention  to  the 
great  spiritual  realities  and  to  the  deepest  interests  of  our 
lives,  and  often  through  association  with  others.  The 
levels  of  energy  are  most  readily  tapped  by  the  great 
experiences  of  religion  and  of  other  primary  instincts. 
And  even  these  other  primary  instincts  can  be  made  to 
help  the  higher  life,  not  by  negative  suppression,  but  by 
giving  these  instincts  a  new  and  significant  content  and 
field,  just  as  an  uplifting  romantic  love  has  in  western 
civilization  grown  out  of  the  simple  sex  instinct.  As 
another  has  said  of  the  primitive  instincts  of  fear  and  of 

15  For  a  recent  sober  and  helpful  discussion  of  some  of  these  newer 
topics,  from  the  religious  point  of  view,  see  “The  Psychology  of 
Power,”  “The  Psychology  of  Grace,”  and  “The  Psychology  of 
Inspiration,”  in  The  Spirit  (edited  by  Streeter),  pp.  68-112,  157-188, 
195-219. 


44 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

self-assertion  as  well  as  of  sex:  “Abolish  them  we  cannot; 
to  suppress  them  is  to  deprive  ourselves  of  their  forces. 
To  convert  them  and  to  redirect  their  forces  to  higher 
purposes  is  the  work  of  beings  possessed  of  intelligence,  of 
will,  and  of  an  ideal.”  16  Here  religion  becomes  what 
James  called  it, — the  great  unlocker  of  the  powers  of  men. 

We  turn  now  to  the  closely  related  and  less  general 
problem  of  self-mastery ,  for  it  is  worth  while  to  see,  even 
if  only  by  barest  suggestion,  how  large  and  many-sided 
the  problem  is ;  how  impossible  it  is  to  solve  it  by  short 
cuts  and  formulas ;  how  imperatively,  therefore,  it  de¬ 
mands  a  large  survey  and  penetrating  discernment  of  the 
laws  of  our  being  and  their  involved  conditions. 

The  problem  of  self-mastery  is  the  problem  of  guiding 
one’s  powers  and  possessions  to  their  true  goal.  It  is  an 
absolutely  fundamental  problem ,  basic  to  all  achievement. 
It  includes  the  mastery  of  one’s  appetites  and  passions 
and  powers — not  simply  by  suppression;  the  mastery  of 
one’s  possessions — that  one  may  own  his  possessions  and 
not  be  owned  by  them;  the  mastery  of  one’s  fears  and 
anxieties.  So  large  is  the  problem.  And  we  must  confine 
our  discussion  at  this  point  to  the  single  realm  of  appe¬ 
tites  and  passions  and  powers.  Even  so,  the  problem 
includes  the  problem  of  temperance  in  all  appetites,  the 
problem  of  personal  purity,  the  problem  of  the  control  of 
temper,  the  problem  of  the  control  of  the  tongue,  and  the 
problem  of  right  habits. 

First  of  all,  self-mastery  needs  self-knowledge — knowl¬ 
edge  of  one’s  own  temperament  and  of  one’s  elements  of 
strength  and  weakness ;  recognition  of  the  kind  of  memory 
one  has ;  whether  one  is  prevailingly  emotional  or  intellec¬ 
tual  or  volitional ;  whether  one  is  naturally  dramatic,  or 
prone  naturally  to  laziness,  etc. 

18  The  Spirit,  edited  by  Streeter,  p.  95. 


The  Psychological  Approach  45 

Self-mastery,  too,  needs  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  nature 
and  of  human  nature — the  realm  in  which  one’s  fight  must 
be  made — and  a  determined  purpose  habitually  to  fulfil  the 
conditions  involved  in  those  laws.  So  only  can  one  be 
sure  that  he  is  not  fighting  against  the  laws  of  the  universe, 
but  is  enlisting  as  allies  in  his  struggle  the  forces  of  exter¬ 
nal  nature  and  of  his  own  nature. 

These  laws  of  human  nature  and  their  conditions  in¬ 
clude  many  suggestions.  The  chief  physical  condition  of 
self-mastery  is  surplus  nervous  energy.  For  that  is  the 
chief  physical  condition  of  power  of  attention ;  and  power, 
under  the  stress  of  temptation,  to  keep  attention  fixed  on 
the  larger  goods  is  the  secret  of  victory.  Self-mastery 
needs,  too,  definitely  to  call  in  the  power  of  habit  in  the 
right  directions,  to  reinforce  the  right  decision  at  every 
point,  remembering  that  there  are  good  habits  as  well  as 
bad. 

Self-mastery  is  not  the  asceticism  of  a  contempt  for  the 
body  or  for  the  gifts  that  come  through  the  body ;  but  it 
does  involve  recognition  of  the  true  place  and  aim  of  these 
sense  elements  of  our  natures  as  real  goods,  though  only 
relative  goods,  and  the  purpose  to  keep  the  relative  goods 
in  their  relative  place. 

Self-mastery,  then,  is  not  negative — the  attempt  simply 
to  suppress  the  evil,  but  positive — replacing  the  evil  with 
the  good.  And  that  requires  engrossing  interests  other 
than  those  that  tempt  to  evil.  All  sane  living  requires  a 
wide  circle  of  interests  to  assure  freedom  from  an  insistent 
single  interest,  and  because  the  man  of  many  interests  is 
much  more  sure  to  find  the  key  to  any  new  complex  situa¬ 
tion  in  which  he  may  find  himself.  And  more  than  this 
must  be  true.  The  man  of  self-mastery  must  have  caught 
the  vision  of  great  interests ,  of  great  causes ,  and  of  great 
enthusiasms ,  that  bring  him  deliverance  from  evil  because 


46  Seeing  Life  Whole 

he  has  found  something  else  so  vastly  more  worth  while 
to  do. 

One  gets  still  closer  to  the  deep  sources  of  self-mastery 
when  he  sees  that  self-mastery  looks  also  to  self-respect 
and  respect  for  the  personality  of  others.  For  true  self- 
respect  is  based  on  the  recognition  of  one’s  own  unique 
individuality,  and  consequent  possible  contribution  to 
society.  Such  self-respect  is  a  distinct  element  of  power 
and  helps  directly  to  self-control.  So,  too,  the  growing 
sense  of  the  value  and  sacredness  of  the  personality  of 
others  directly  counterworks  that  contempt  for  person¬ 
ality  which  underlies  all  moral  outrage,  and  so  is  basic  to 
self-mastery. 

Moreover,  we  learn  to  serve  by  serving;  and  to  render 
unselfish,  reverent,  loving  service  to  others  itself  insures 
the  continuation  of  such  service,  and  the  vital  practice  of 
self-mastery.  It  is  the  laboratory  method  in  morals. 

But  the  one  great  road  to  self-mastery,  as  to  all  high 
achievement  in  character,  is  personal  association  with  the  N 
best,  and  primarily — the  Christian  believes — with  Christ. 
And  religion  brings  one  more  great  motive  for  self-mastery 
to  bear — the  certainty  that  God’s  will  in  duty,  as  a 
Father’s  will,  is  inevitably  not  hindrance  and  limitation 
but  a  great  way  to  life. 

These — in  barest  outline — are  some  of  the  chief  psycho¬ 
logical  considerations  which  need  to  be  taken  into  account 
in  the  problem  of  self-mastery.  They  may  perhaps  sug¬ 
gest,  at  least,  how  real,  how  comprehensive,  and  how  vital 
is  the  psychological  approach  to  a  Christian  philosophy 
of  life. 

vin 

We  have  been  surveying  that  part  of  the  central  prob¬ 
lem  of  self-masterv  which  has  to  do  with  the  control  of 


The  Psychological  Approach  4 7 

appetites  and  passions  and  powers,  approaching  the  prob¬ 
lem  from  the  side  of  psychology,  from  the  laws  especially 
of  human  nature.  To  see  now  the  essential  harmony  of 
the  revelation  of  the  secrets  of  self-mastery — whether  ex¬ 
pressed  in  the  laws  of  human  nature,  or  in  Christ’s  life 
and  teaching — we  may  well  consider  another  aspect  of 
self-mastery, — the  mastery  of  one's  fears  and  anxieties ,  as 
Christ  points  the  way . 

Christ  means  to  emancipate  his  disciples  from  fear  of 
the  natural  ills  of  poverty ,  suffering ,  age ,  failure ,  and 
death . 

These  are  all  very  natural  subjects  of  human  anxiety, 
no  doubt.  Christ,  it  should  be  clearly  seen,  does  not  deny 
their  existence  in  the  life  of  men,  nor  promise  his  disciples 
exemption  from  them.  And  yet  he  is  profoundly  con¬ 
cerned  to  deliver  his  disciples  from  the  weakening  fear  of 
any  of  these  natural  ills.  Let  us  see  what  it  means  to  face 
them  squarely  in  the  spirit  of  Christ. 

Christ,  in  the  first  place,  confronts  them  all  with  his  one 
unconquerable  faith — faith  in  the  invincible  love  of  God . 
Nothing  can  replace  that.  That,  he  says,  you  may 
absolutely  rely  upon,  whatever  the  seeming;  and  it  is  the 
root  of  a  peace  the  world  can  neither  give  nor  take  away. 
This  is  no  religious  cant.  It  is  Christ’s  profoundest  con¬ 
viction,  for  which  no  facts  are  too  hard,  and  which  he 
wants  to  share  with  every  disciple.  The  endless  fruitful¬ 
ness  for  the  life  of  men  of  his  own  baffling  crucifixion  and 
death  is  no  small  part  of  his  proof. 

But,  in  the  second  place,  Christ  has  to  say  concerning 
all  these  natural  ills  that  anxiety  about  them  is  quite 
misplaced.  They  are  not  proper  subjects  for  anxiety  at 
all.  He  does  not  say,  “Do  not  be  too  anxious  about 
them.”  He  says,  “Be  not  anxious” ;  “Fear  not.”  It  is  as 
though  he  were  saying,  If  you  want  a  truly  satisfying  life, 


43 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

you  must  get,  above  all,  a  different  viewpoint.  Bo  not 
concentrate  your  attention  on  things .  “For  even  in  a 
man’s  abundance,  his  life  is  not  from  the  things  which  he 
possesseth.”  You  can  be  perfectly  certain  of  that.  You 
may  go  through  life  and  never  miss  a  good  meal,  never 
lack  for  ready  money,  never  have  an  illness,  never  fail  in 
your  plans  for  material  prosperity,  and  live  to  a  green  old 
age,  and  still  have  lived  a  worthless  and  contemptible  life, 
deserving  the  contempt  of  others  and  your  own  self¬ 
contempt.  You  have  the  breadth  of  your  own  nature  to 
reckon  with,  and  the  fundamental  laws  of  human  life, 
which  are  laws  of  God.  Supremely  regard  these,  and  you 
cannot  fail  in  what  most  concerns  you.  For  any  satisfy¬ 
ing  life,  things  are  incidental  and  are  best  taken  inci¬ 
dentally.  Christ’s  own  life  is  proof.  He  knew  by  experi¬ 
ence  what  these  natural  ills  meant.  Nevertheless  he  was 
the  great  bearer  of  life.  And  he  does  not  deal  softly  with 
his  disciples.  Rather  he  urges,  “It  is  enough  for  the 
disciple  that  he  be  as  his  master.”  His  appeal  is  to  the 
heroic  in  men.  “If  any  man  would  come  after  me,  let  him 
deny  himself,  and  take  up  his  cross  daily  and  follow  me.” 

What,  then,  is  one  to  say,  from  Christ’s  point  of  view, 
to  these  different  natural  ills  that  in  some  form  and 
degree  are  likely  to  come  into  any  life — poverty,  suffering, 
old  age,  failure,  and  death? 

First,  so  far  as  they  are  the  natural  lot  of  men,  one  is 
not  to  cringe  and  play  the  coward.  Just  because  they 
have  some  element  of  naturalness  in  them,  they  are  not 
merely  arbitrary  and  meaningless,  but  have  valuable  dis¬ 
cipline  to  give.  And,  moreover,  no  ill  is  lessened  but  only 
increased  by  cringing  cowardice. 

One  is  to  make  sure,  too,  in  the  second  place,  that  these 
natural  ills  do  not  come  upon  him,  or  that  their  terrors 
are  not  increased ,  through  his  own  fault, — through  care- 


The  Psychological  Approach  49 

less  or  wilful  disobedience  to  the  laws  of  life.  That  will 
remove  their  worst  sting. 

With  reference  to  others,  the  Christian  disciple  is  also 
to  have  his  earnest  part  in  forwarding  a  civilization  that 
shall  be  so  reverent  of  the  person,  so  emphatic  in  putting 
persons  above  things,  so  insistent  that  the  standards  and 
ideals  of  Christ  are  to  prevail  in  all  human  relations,  that 
all  the  human  power  and  resource  can  do  will  be  done  to 
lessen  the  unnecessary  bitterness  of  these  natural  ills . 

Let  the  Christian  man  make  it  certain  to  himself,  too, 
that  it  is  necessary  for  him  to  be  a  true  man ,  and  to  take 
without  a  whimper  whatever  that  involves.  Even  Pompey 
could  rise  to  the  dignity  of  saying,  when  warned  of  the 
danger  of  a  course  he  was  to  take:  “It  is  necessary  for 
me  to  go.  It  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  live.”  Comfort, 
and  even  life,  can  be  had  on  terms  plainly  impossible  to 
the  true  man.  One  cannot  consent  to  play  the  despicable 
part  of  that  member  of  the  arctic  exploring  party  who 
had  to  be  shot  because,  to  satisfy  his  own  desire,  he  was 
stealing  from  the  scanty  stock  of  food  that,  daily  weighed 
out,  alone  stood  between  the  whole  group  and  starvation. 
Suppose  he  had  carried  his  plan  through  to  the  end, — 
successfully  and  undetected,  and  had  alone  survived,  how 
horrible  still  his  everlasting  self-contempt ! 

I  was  ashamed,  I  dared  not  lift  my  eyes, 

I  could  not  bear  to  look  upon  the  skies; 

What  I  had  done !  sure,  everybody  knew ! 

From  everywhere  hands  pointed  where  I  stood, 

And  scornful  eyes  were  piercing  through  and  through 
The  moody  armour  of  my  hardihood. 

I  heard  their  voices  too,  each  word  an  asp 
That  buzz’d  and  stung  me  sudden  as  a  flame; 

And  all  the  world  was  jolting  on  my  name. 

And  now  and  then  there  came  a  wicked  rasp 
Of  laughter,  jarring  me  to  deeper  shame. 


60 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

And  then  I  looked,  but  there  was  no  one 'High, 

No  eyes  that  stabbed  like  swords  or  glinted  sly, 

No  laughter  creaking  on  the  silent  air: 

And  then  I  found  that  I  was  all  alone 
Facing  my  soul,  and  next  I  was  aware 
That  this  mad  mockery  was  all  my  own.17 

Moreover,  this  is  God’s  world,  and  the  Christian  is  to 
believe  in  His  providence;  not  as  guarding  him  from  all 
discomfort, — Christ  expressly  denies  that ;  but  as  always 
caring,  and  as  finally  overruling.  The  Christian  may 
know  that  so  far  as  he  proves  himself  a  true  disciple  of 
Christ,  he  is  “immortal  till  his  work  is  done,”  as  old 
Thomas  Fuller  insisted.  Even  death,  for  the  Christian,  is 
not  necessarily  an  evil.  And  so  Jesus  urges  with  his 
disciples :  “Be  not  afraid  of  them  that  kill  the  body,  and 
after  that  have  no  more  that  they  can  do.  But  I  will 
warn  you  whom  ye  shall  fear:  Fear  Him  who  after  He 
hath  killed  hath  power  to  cast  into  hell.  Yea,  I  say  unto 
you,  Fear  Him.”  That  is,  fear  God;  fear  for  your  inner 
life,  and  let  this  nobler  fear  cast  out  all  meaner  fears . 

Let  the  disciple  of  Christ,  too,  gird  up  the  loins  of  his 
soul  anew  by  remembering  that  if  poverty  and  suffering 
and  outward  defeat  come  to  the  servant  of  God  in  the 
path  of  duty,  and  in  spite  of  fidelity  in  earnest  and  loving 
service,  they  still  cannot  deprive  him  of  the  far  greater 
riches  that  money  cannot  buy — the  inner  riches  of  the 
friendly  life,  of  the  love  and  trust  and  gratitude  of  men, 
of  work  worth  doing,  and  of  the  joy  of  fidelity  and  of  inner 
victory,  of  rising  to  the  height  of  great  causes  and  high 
enthusiasms,  and  sharing  in  God’s  own  purposes  and 
triumphs.  For  what  else  does  life  exist?  You  cannot  be 
defeated  in  the  highest  but  by  your  own  consent. 

No  outward  calamities,  be  it  recalled,  can  carry  any 
"James  Stevens. 


The  Psychological  Approach  51 

such  loss  as  the  steady  deterioration  of  selfish ,  unscrupu¬ 
lous,  parasitic  wealth .  As  Carpenter  says: 

“Like  other  problems  the  problem  of  property  is  best  solved 
indirectly.  That  is,  not  by  seeking  material  wealth  directly, 
but  by  seeking  that  of  which  material  wealth  is  only  the 
symbol.  ‘Seek  ye  first  the  kingdom  .  .  .  and  all  these  things 
shall  be  added  unto  you.’  Vaguely  metaphysical  as  these 
words  sound,  yet  I  believe  they  express  a  literal  fact.  .  .  . 
Seeking  ease  we  have  found  disease;  scrambling  for  wealth, 
our  civilization  has  become  poverty-stricken  beyond  all  ex¬ 
pression;  prizing  mere  technical  knowledge,  we  have  for¬ 
gotten  the  existence  of  wisdom;  and  setting  up  material 
property  as  our  deity,  we  have  dethroned  the  ruling  power 
in  our  own  natures.  Not  till  this  last  is  restored  can  we 
possibly  attain  to  possession  of  the  other  things.”  18 

And  for  the  life  that  has  been  unselfish,  genuinely  true 
and  friendly,  faithful  in  its  following  of  Christ,  the  deeper 
wretchedness  of  poverty ,  of  suffering ,  of  defeat,  of  old  age , 
and  of  death  is  simply  impossible.  Is  it  poverty  that 
threatens?  The  roots  of  his  life  lie  deeper  than  things. 
Is  he  in  the  grip  of  suffering?  He  has  learned  to  con¬ 
vert  his  sufferings  into  sacrifices  to  God  and  men,  and 
so  into  an  instrument  of  joy.  Has  he  seemed  to  fail?  In 
the  midst  of  outer  failure,  he  remembers  that  he  is  the 
disciple  of  a  Master  who  seemed,  too,  to  be  utterly 
defeated.  Is  old  age  coming  on?  He  refuses  to  be  cowed 
by  the  thought  of  age ;  for  ugly  and  sordid  age  cannot  be 
the  lot  of  the  man  who  has  sowed  persistently  the  seed  of 
purity  and  love.  Is  death  in  store?  Death  itself,  in  the 
thought  of  the  Christian  man,  is  but  the  gateway  to  a 
larger  life  and  a  more  transcendent  service.  The  true 
follower  of  Christ  has  been  set  at  liberty  from  the  bondage 
of  these  natural  ills.  He  is  a  free  man. 

M  England’ s  Ideal,  pp.  159-160,  quoted  by  Moffatt. 


52  Seeing  Life  Whole 

The  great  convictions,  ideals,  and  hopes  of  religion,  as 
expressed  by  Christ,  aim  thus  to  bring  to  men  power  and 
freedom  and  victory.  While  these  great  motives  of  reli¬ 
gion  transcend  in  their  sweep  the  simply  psychological 
considerations  from  man’s  nature,  they  nevertheless  fit 
right  into  the  great  psychological  laws  and  naturally 
supplement  them.  The  psychological  and  the  religious 
motives  are  at  home  with  each  other ;  they  belong  together ; 
they  obey  essentially  the  same  laws ;  they  are  in  thorough 
harmony.  There  is  a  real  and  helpful  psychological 
approach  to  a  Christian  philosophy  of  life. 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  VALUE  APPROACH  1 

I 

It  is  hard  to  realize  the  truth  of  Schiller’s  statement: 
“Value  is  one  of  the  last  of  the  great  philosophic  topics  to 
have  received  recognition.  .  .  .  Its  discovery  was  prob¬ 
ably  the  greatest  philosophic  achievement  of  the  nine¬ 
teenth  century.”  2  But  even  within  the  comparatively 
short  period  which  has  elapsed,  some  things  have  become 
fairly  clear.  The  discussion  of  values  began  with  the 
sense  of  the  oppositions  of  “fact”  and  “value,”  of  the 
“is”  and  the  “ought  ”  of  the  standpoints  of  “description” 
and  “appreciation” — or,  as  we  have  been  saying,  of  the 
question  of  process,  and  the  question  of  meaning.  But 
as  the  discussion  has  gone  on,  as  Schiller  puts  it : 3 

“In  general  it  may  be  concluded  that,  since  values  inhere 
in  all  the  ‘facts’  that  are  recognized  as  such,  they  are  them¬ 
selves  facts,  and  that  the  antithesis  between  values  and  facts 
cannot  be  made  absolute.  Values  are  not  simply  fortuitous 
and  gratuitous  additions  to  facts,  which  are  merely  subjective 
and  should  be  eliminated  by  strict  science,  but  are  essential 
to  cognitive  process  and  compatible  with  any  sort  and  degree 

1 1  am  seeking  in  this  chapter  to  make  a  somewhat  complete  state¬ 
ment  of  a  line  of  thought  which  I  have  found  very  suggestive  and 
helpful  in  giving  religion  its  setting  in  the  whole  realm  of  the 
ideal — the  close  kinship  of  those  values  which  we  count  most  sig¬ 
nificant.  The  discussion  here  may  be  regarded  as  a  development  of 
the  partial  treatment  of  this  subject  in  Chapter  II  of  Religion  as 
Life. 

3  F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  Encyclopaedia  of  Religion  and  Ethics,  article 
“Value,”  Vol.  XII,  p.  584. 

8  Op.  cit.,  p.  587. 


53 


54 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

of  objectivity.  ...  It  would  seem  to  follow  from  the  rela¬ 
tions  between  value  and  fact  that  values  cannot  be  denied 
existence  in  any  world  that  can  exist  for  man,  and  this  in 
several  senses.” 

It  should  therefore  be  said  from  the  beginning  of  our 
discussion  of  values,  that  value  as  here  used  is  not  intended 
to  be  subjective  in  the  sense  of  denying  the  reality  of  the 
relation  of  inner  experience  to  objective  fact,  but  only  in 
the  sense  that  “a  relation  to  personality  is  inherent  in  aU 
•values .”  The  experience  in  itself,  in  the  first  place,  is  a 
great  fact  in  the  world,  as  Schleiermacher  and  Ritschl 
have  both  made  clear.  Indeed,  the  experience  of  the  beau¬ 
tiful,  for  example,  in  thoughtful  minds,  may  be  said  to  be 
a  real  goal  of  the  external  world,  and  in  that  sense  the 
external  world  exists  for  the  sake  of  the  enjoying  mind. 
Moreover,  the  sense  of  value,  as  religion  uses  it,  is 
grounded  in  a  faith  that  the  world  actually  has  meaning 
and  value — a  purpose  of  love  at  its  heart.  The  ideal  view 
so  expresses  its  basic  faith  in  a  world  in  which  are  to  be 
found  the  objective  grounds  for  the  conservation  and 
progress  of  values — faith  ultimately  in  God. 

To  find  one’s  way  into  appreciation  and  conviction  of 
the  great  values  of  life  is  certainly  a  chief  end  both  of 
education  and  of  life.  The  culture  of  an  educated  man 
implies  the  discovery  and  appreciation  of  an  increasing 
store  of  permanent  and  valuable  interests.  And  really  to 
live  with  breadth  and  intensity  requires  a  vital  sense  of 
the  great  values.  Life  is  fundamentally  cheapened 
wherever  we  lose  the  sense  of  worth  out  of  it.  Just  be¬ 
cause,  for  most  of  us,  as  Carlyle  says,  the  miraculous  by 
simple  repetition  ceases  to  be  miraculous,  we  need  the  help 
of  the  poet,  the  artist,  and  the  seer.  For  it  is  the  very 
business  and  mission  of  poet  and  artist  and  seer  to  keep 


55 


The  Value  Approach 

within  themselves  the  responsiveness  of  youth  to  the  won¬ 
der  and  beauty  of  life,  to  preserve  the  glory  of  the 
commonplace,  in  order  that  they  may  help  the  rest  of  us 
to  a  like  vision.  So  Kipling  thanks  God  that  he  has  seen 
naught  common  on  His  earth. 

The  thesis  of  this  chapter  is  that  the  way  into  apprecia¬ 
tion  and  conviction  of  all  the  great  values  of  life  is 
essentially  the  same  way,  whether  they  are  the  esthetic 
values  of  the  beautiful  in  music  and  art  and  literature; 
the  unifying  intellectual  values  of  the  scientific  spirit  and 
method,  or  of  the  historical  spirit,  or  of  the  philosophic 
mind;  the  priceless  personal  values  of  friendship;  or  the 
values  of  our  great  moral  and  religious  ideals, — the  all- 
inclusive  values  of  the  true,  of  the  good,  and  of  the 
beautiful. 

Now,  if  the  way  into  all  these  great  values  of  life  is 
essentially  the  same  way,  it  is  plain  that  this  will  bring  a 
sense  of  unity  and  simplicity  into  life  that  could  hardly 
come  otherwise.  And  just  as  in  modern  science  the  sense 
of  law  brings  conviction  of  possible  achievement,  so  in 
these  various  realms  of  value  the  sense  of  unity  brings  a 
like  assurance  of  reality  and  hope.  For,  if  there  is  one 
way  into  all  the  great  values  of  life,  that  very  fact  will 
help  us  to  discern,  too,  the  chief  directions  of  significant 
living.  Each  value  will  help  all  the  other  values  and  in 
turn  cannot  spare  the  help  of  these  others.  Religion,  thus, 
decidedly  loses  where  it  does  not  use  the  value  approach 
or,  in  particular,  the  esthetic  analogy.  So  remarkable 
and  so  honest  a  book  as  Herrmann’s  The  Communion  of 
the  Christian  with  Gody  for  example,  with  its  emphasis  on 
judgments  of  worth,  would  gain  much  in  concrete  and 
vivid  putting  by  a  far  freer  use  of  the  esthetic  analogy. 

Whaty  then ,  is  the  one  great  way  into  the  values  of 
life f 


56 


Seeing  Life  Whole 


n 

First  of  all,  we  are  commonly  introduced  into  the  values 
of  life  through  the  testimony  of  others ,  who  have  preceded 
us  in  appreciation  of  the  value.  It  is  in  this  way  that 
values  of  all  kinds  spread  from  mind  to  mind  and  make 
their  headway  in  society.  For  we  are  all  born  into  a 
world  in  which  many  are  already  living  in  the  enjoyment 
of  life’s  significant  values.  And  this  very  fact  calls  our 
attention  to  these  values.  The  constant  and  inevitable 
factor  of  imitation,  also,  that  is  often  unconscious,  is 
always  at  work  in  our  human  relations,  and  tending  to 
reproduce  in  one  person  the  sense  of  value  found  in 
another.  Both  these  facts  make  plain  the  folly  of  attempt¬ 
ing  to  discover  all  values  anew  for  ourselves.  Before  we 
could  set  before  ourselves  any  conscious  search  for  valu¬ 
able  interests,  we  should  already  be  sharing  in  them, 
through  association  with  others.  What  McDougall  says 
of  the  moral  sentiments  may  be  said  of  all  our  values: 
“No  man  could  acquire  by  means  of  his  own  unaided 
reflections  and  unguided  emotions  any  considerable  array 
of  moral  sentiments  ;  still  less  could  he  acquire  in  that  way 
any  consistent  and  lofty  system  of  them.”  4 

It  becomes  the  very  business  of  a  teacher,  thus,  to  be  an 
honest  and  effective  witness  to  such  values  as  he  has  him¬ 
self  attained  in  the  sphere  of  his  own  best  study  and 
living.  And  similarly  this  is  also  the  precise  business  of 
the  literary  or  musical  or  art  critic.  Men  want  from  the 
critic  honest  testimony  concerning  his  real  impression  of 
the  art  product  under  discussion, — testimony  that  is  born 
out  of  his  larger  experience,  his  expert  knowledge,  and  his 
superior  insight.  The  critic  is  thus  primarily  an  intro¬ 
ducer  to  the  great  values  of  which  he  speaks.  And  the 

•  Social  Psychology,  p.  219. 


57 


The  Value  Approach 

traveler  prizes  his  Baedeker  in  the  art  galleries  of  Europe 
— though  he  may  sometimes  scoff  at  it — just  because  the 
selection  of  pictures  with  its  asterisks  and  double  asterisks 
is  believed  to  reflect  the  expert  knowledge  and  superior 
insight  of  longer  and  larger  experience  than  his  own.  The 
traveler  might  be  glad,  if  indefinite  time  were  at  his  dis¬ 
posal,  to  try  to  make  his  own  discoveries  of  the  best 
pictures  in  the  collection  he  is  studying,  but  just  because 
for  him  “Art  is  long  and  Time  is  fleeting,”  he  gratefully 
accepts  the  help  of  those  who  can  introduce  him  to  the 
best.  It  is  in  this  fashion,  indeed,  that  all  values  ordi¬ 
narily  come  to  one.  The  pictures,  the  music,  the  poems ; 
the  scientific,  historical,  and  philosophical  insights ;  the 
friends ;  the  moral  and  religious  ideals  which  we  have  and 
which  mean  most  to  us,  have  all  come,  for  the  most  part, 
through  the  introduction  of  some  other.  But  even  the 
competent  critic  can  only  introduce  one  to  the  values  of 
which  he  speaks.  What  measure  of  attainment  one  is  then 
to  make  in  them  depends  on  oneself. 

So  even  religion  makes  its  way  among  men.  “The  pro¬ 
gram  of  Christianity,”  as  Professor  Bosworth  says,  “is  the 
conquest  of  the  world  by  a  campaign  of  testimony  through 
empowered  witnesses.”  It  is  not  by  accident,  therefore, 
that  in  John’s  Gospel,  side  by  side  with  the  great  words, 
Life,  Light,  Truth,  Love,  is  the  other  word,  Witness. 
Nor  is  it  by  accident  that  the  Gospel  sums  up  the  life  and 
message  of  John  the  Baptist  by  saying:  “There  came  a 
man,  sent  from  God,  whose  name  was  John.  The  same 
came  for  witness,  that  he  might  bear  witness  of  the  Light, 
that  all  might  believe  through  him.  He  was  not  the  Light, 
but  came  that  he  might  bear  witness  of  the  Light.”  6  We 
too  seldom  appreciate  our  deep  debt  to  the  original  Chris¬ 
tian  witnesses. 

6  John  1 :  6-8. 


58 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

We  shall  better  understand  the  prime  significance  of  the 
work  of  the  honest  and  effective  witness  if  we  remember 
that  there  are  only  two  supreme  services  which  we  can 
render  to  one  another :  the  witness  of  life,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  witness  of  word,  on  the  other.  For  the  first 
witness  comes  through  the  contagion  of  a  good  life, 
through  the  unconscious  influence  of  an  incarnated  ideal. 
It  is  one’s  greatest  gift  to  another,  because  it  is  the  gift 
of  oneself.  Life  comes  from  life.  And  the  witness  by  word 
is  the  sharing  of  our  own  best  vision  through  honest  testi¬ 
mony  to  the  best  we  know,  to  what  means  most  to  us,  to 
the  chief  sources  of  our  life.  The  Christian’s  sincere 
testimony — that  in  all  the  higher  ranges  of  his  life  he  lives 
by  Christ,  by  convictions  and  motives  and  ideals  that  came 
from  him — is  a  supreme  example  of  the  kind  of  testimony 
by  which  all  values  go  forward.  And  these  two  witnesses 
of  life  and  of  word  are  closely  interrelated  and  supple¬ 
mentary,  and  we  cannot  wisely  separate  them. 

Now  if  these  two  witnesses  of  life  and  of  word  are  the 
two  supreme  services  which  men  can  render  to  one  another, 
it  concerns  us  to  ask  what  makes  a  man’s  influence  and 
testimony  count  with  us?  What  are  the  qualities  of  an 
effective  witness?  For  these  qualities  would  be  the  elements 
of  the  highest  success  in  life,  the  conditions  of  the  richest 
giving  of  ourselves  in  all  our  personal  relations,  the  quali¬ 
ties  which  mark  the  good  seed  of  the  Kingdom,  the  quali¬ 
ties  of  the  persons  who  are  to  help  to  insure  the  progress 
of  the  race.  What  are  these  qualities  ? 

One  direct  answer  is,  that  they  are  the  qualities  of  the 
Beatitudes ;  for  Christ  counted  these  the  characteristics 
of  the  citizen  of  the  new  kingdom  which  he  came  to  set  up ; 
and  they  include  naturally  the  personal  and  social  quali¬ 
ties  of  high  influence. 

A  second  answer  is  to  be  found  in  analyzing  out  the 


59 


The  Value  Approach 

qualities  of  the  effective  witness,  who,  if  he  is  to  be  a 
genuinely  moral  force,  must  be  not  dominating  but  truly 
persuasive.  What,  then,  makes  a  man’s  testimony  to  a 
person,  a  cause,  a  great  interest  or  value  of  any  kind, 
count?  What  are  the  qualities  of  the  men  who  best  help 
us  to  come  with  appreciation  and  conviction  into  the 
values  of  music  and  art  and  literature,  the  values  of  the 
scientific  and  historic  and  philosophic  spirit,  the  values  of 
friendship,  the  values  of  moral  and  religious  ideals — the 
all-embracing  values  of  the  true,  the  good,  and  the  beau¬ 
tiful? 

The  answer  probably  must  be,  first  of  all,  the  man's 
own  conviction.  For  you  must  be  impressed  by  the  man’s 
own  deep-going  belief  in  what  he  is  bearing  witness  to, — 
whether  by  life  or  by  word.  You  must  be  sure  that  those 
who  bear  witness  to  the  true,  the  good,  and  the  beautiful 
have  themselves  indubitably  caught  the  vision.  Nothing 
can  replace  a  man’s  own  conviction  as  an  element  of  power. 
He  must  demonstrate  that  he  has  here  something  that  he 
believes  in  with  all  his  soul.  His  influence  will  be  measured 
not  by  the  length  of  his  creed,  but  by  the  depth  of  con¬ 
viction  behind  it.  A  solid,  enduring  fulcrum  is  necessary 
to  the  exercise  of  influence.  Deep  convictions  form  that 
fulcrum.  The  man  of  conviction  can  be  no  sophist, 
though  sophistry  is  a  real  danger  in  education.  From 
the  very  breadth  of  their  outlook,  highly  educated  men 
sometimes  cultivate  a  fatal  facility  in  finding  reasons  for 
doing  what  they  want  to  do.  To  have  found  a  specious 
excuse  for  not  doing  one’s  duty  seems  well  nigh  as  satis¬ 
factory  to  many  as  to  have  accomplished  the  duty  set. 
We  cannot  do  justice,  either,  to  the  necessity  of  conviction 
without  remembering  that  breadth  is  not  lack  of  dis¬ 
crimination,  nor  tolerance  lack  of  conviction.  The  effec¬ 
tive  witness  needs,  thus,  the  sense  of  a  vision  seen,  and 


60 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

hence  a  sense  of  mission  and  a  sense  of  message.  Con¬ 
viction,  thus,  is  the  first  condition  of  all  for  the  effective 
witness ;  but  it  bears  persuasive  testimony,  it  does  no 
browbeating. 

The  second  quality  of  the  effective  witness  is  the  man's 
own  character  and  well-tested  judgment  in  the  sphere  in 
which  he  bears  witness.  There  is  no  cheap  way  to  solid 
and  enduring  influence.  In  the  last  analysis  we  have  only 
ourselves  to  give.  We  must  speak  out  of  our  own  experi¬ 
ence.  There  is  no  possible  way  by  which  we  can  separate 
the  influence  of  our  word  from  the  final  influence  of  our 
personality.  There  is  always  a  double  test  in  the  case  of 
any  witness,  the  test  both  of  character  and  of  judgment. 
We  must  be  able  to  trust  the  character  of  the  witness  and 
his  unquestioned  competence  in  the  sphere  in  which  he  is 
speaking.  He  must  have  earned  the  right  to  speak,  from 
long  and  significant  experience.  Weighing  evidence,  in 
the  last  analysis,  must  be  weighing  witnesses.  How  large 
and  rich  and  significant  is  the  personality  back  of  the 
witness?  This  is  the  question  that  presses.  The  “forceful 
man”  in  the  realm  of  values  is  necessarily  the  man  of  both 
character  and  judgment. 

The  third  quality  of  the  effective  witness  is  disinterested 
love.  We  must  be  able  to  believe  that  the  witness  who 
would  introduce  us  to  some  great  value  of  life  has  no  selfish 
scheme  of  his  own  to  work.  He  must  be  felt  to  seek  sin¬ 
cerely  the  good  of  others.  For  there  are  few  conditions  of 
influence  which  lie  deeper  than  that  it  can  be  said  of  a 
man  that  he  forgets  himself  in  his  cause.  Undoubtedly 
one  of  the  chief  reasons  why  Mr.  Roosevelt  weighed  so 
much  and  so  long  with  men  of  all  parties  was  because  men 
had  the  feeling  that  he  did  so  many  things  which  no  one 
could  believe  it  was  simply  politic  to  do.  On  the  other 
hand,  influence  tends  to  go  when  yielding  to  selfish  advan- 


61 


The  Value  Approach 

tage  comes  in.  The  public  man,  above  all,  who  wishes  to 
count  profoundly  in  the  life  of  the  nation  and  not  as  a 
demagogue  must  keep  himself  above  suspicion.  He  must 
be  no  grafter  in  any  sense  or  degree ;  he  must  not  cheaply 
lend  his  name ;  he  must  not  profit  selfishly  by  the  position 
held.  He  is  to  be  no  player  of  politics.  The  unselfish  love 
of  an  effective  witness,  too,  must  be  so  disinterested,  so 
sensitive  to  the  deeper  conditions  of  another’s  good  as 
sacredly  to  respect  the  personality  of  that  other,  and  so 
for  this  reason,  too,  not  to  mistake  domination  for  in¬ 
fluence. 

These,  then,  are  the  three  broad  qualifications  of  the 
effective  witness:  conviction,  character  and  judgment,  dis¬ 
interested  love.  If  a  man  has  these  he  can  hardly  help 
being  effective. 

But  there  is  a  fourth  quality  not  unimportant :  power  to 
put  one's  testimony  home ,  that  is,  power  to  make  the  value 
to  which  witness  is  borne  real,  rational  and  vital.  This, 
for  example,  is  what  the  Christian  prophet  would  wish  to 
do  with  reference  to  the  great  Christian  truths:  to  put 
his  testimony  to  these  truths  in  such  fashion  as  first  of  all 
to  make  them  real — real  as  the  realest  things  of  the  daily 
life,  seen  to  be  inevitably  related  to  those  realities  of  which 
we  are  most  certain.  And  rational  in  the  true  sense — not 
rationalizing,  giving  trumped-up  reasons  for  foregone 
conclusions — but  showing  that  these  great  Christian 
truths  are  knit  up  with  the  best  thinking  one  can  any¬ 
where  do ;  that  they  are  part  and  parcel  of  a  unified 
rational  world,  so  that  one  can  be  sure  that,  when  he  turns 
his  face  toward  God  he  does  not  turn  his  back  upon  the 
reason  with  which  God  endowed  him.  And  vital — seen  to 
spring  up  inevitably  out  of  life,  in  closest  relations  with 
life,  and  having  abiding  motive,  dynamic,  and  leading 
for  life. 


62 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

In  finding  our  way,  then,  into  the  great  values  of  life, 
we  are  commonly  introduced  through  the  testimony  of 
others,  who  have  preceded  us  in  the  appreciation  of  these 
values.  And  those  who  can  best  give  us  this  vital  help 
must  be  those  who  have  the  qualities  of  the  effective 
witness. 


m 

In  this  introduction  to  the  values  of  life  through  the 
witness  of  others  we  have  been  emphasizing  one  side  of  the 
moral  law,  as  we  have  seen  that  Herrmann  characterizes 
it:  “Mental  and  spiritual  fellowship  among  men.”  We 
turn  now  to  the  other  side  of  the  moral  law :  “Mental  and 
spiritual  independence  on  the  part  of  the  individual” — 
absolute  honesty.  For  if  one  would  find  his  way  into 
genuine  appreciation  of  any  of  these  great  values — 
esthetic,  intellectual,  personal,  moral  or  religious — he 
must  have  downright  inner  honesty.  He  must  be  honest, 
first  of  all,  with  himself,  and  not  less  with  others,  from 
whom  he  receives  such  values,  or  to  whom  he  is  in  turn  to 
bring  his  introducing  witness.  Or,  in  other  words,  the  way 
into  all  the  great  values  of  life  must  be  marked  by  reality 
at  every  point.  One  must  himself  be  real,  must  get  at 
reality  in  the  value  which  he  is  seeking,  and  there  must  be 
corresponding  reality  in  his  own  witness.  Unreality  is  a 
root  peril. 

On  the  one  hand,  then,  there  must  be  complete  honesty — 
no  pretence  of  any  hind — in  our  original  experience. 
Whether  in  art  or  in  religion,  whether  in  the  intellectual 
values  of  the  scientific  and  philosophical  spirit,  or  in  the 
great  fundamental  values  of  friendship,  there  is  to  be  no 
pretending  to  feel,  to  see,  to  enjoy,  or  to  know  what  for  us 
is  not  really  there.  We  cannot  build  an  honest  structure 
on  a  sham  foundation.  Every  bit  of  inbuilt  sham  only 


63 


The  Value  Approach 

hinders  reax  growth  in  an  appreciation  of  one’s  own.  One 
of  my  friends,  more  honest  than  most  of  us,  found  his  way 
to  the  Sistine  Chapel  in  Rome,  that  he  might  see  Michael 
Angelo’s  great  frescoes,  and  admitted  his  disappointment 
in  them.  But  he  realized  nevertheless  that  the  fault  might 
not  be  wholly  Michael  Angelo’s ;  and  yet  he  would  not 
simply  take  over  passively  the  judgment  of  the  critics. 
So  he  came  back  day  after  day  to  see  if  he  could  not  dis¬ 
cover  for  himself  something  of  the  greatness  of  the  fres¬ 
coes.  In  all  this,  he  was  only  insisting  on  an  honest 
experience  of  his  own.  We  are  all  in  danger  of  simply 
taking  over  passively  judgments  of  others,  especially  the 
judgment  of  experts.  This  is  not  to  deny  that  the  expert 
has  a  great  service  to  render  us,  but  it  must  be  in  the 
direction  of  our  taking  time  and  effort  to  see  for  ourselves, 
not  of  substituting  forthwith  the  results  of  the  expert’s 
observation  and  thinking  for  the  results  of  our  own  obser¬ 
vation  and  thinking.  For  example,  we  shall  get  most  help 
out  of  a  wise  commentary  on  a  Biblical  passage  by  first  of 
all  honestly  insisting  on  finding  by  genuine  study  what  it 
means  to  ourselves.  Only  so  can  we  get  the  most  from 
others,  and  especially  from  those  who  are  deservedly 
authorities  of  the  first  rank.  The  insight,  thus,  the  grow¬ 
ing  appreciation  of  the  value,  must  be  absolutely  one’s 
own  or  nothing  is  accomplished.  In  Raphael’s  great  pic¬ 
ture  of  The  School  at  Athens ,  it  will  be  remembered  there 
is  at  one  side  of  the  picture  a  little  group  of  students  of 
geometry  gathered  about  their  teacher  following  a  demon¬ 
stration  through  a  design  on  the  floor.  The  first  pupil  is 
evidently  following  the  demonstration  with  full  under¬ 
standing;  the  second  pupil  does  not  catch  the  point  and 
turns  to  see  whether  the  other,  leaning  above  him,  sees  the 
demonstration.  But  no  seeing  by  the  first  or  the  third 
will  help  in  any  way  the  seeing  of  the  other.  He,  too,  must 


64* 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

see  for  himself.  Another  can  only  give  us  introduction. 
We  have  to  come  through  it  to  insights  and  convictions 
and  ideals  of  our  own.  This  is  the  meaning  of  the  two 
proverbs :  “You  may  lead  a  horse  to  water  but  you  can’t 
make  him  drink,”  and  “Concerning  tastes  there  is  no 
disputing.”  Here,  too,  is  the  needed  emphasis  on  inner 
soundness,  which  is  contained  in  Christ’s  warning  against 
the  salt  that  has  lost  its  saltness,  the  light  that  is  hid. 
First  of  all,  then,  in  meeting  the  demand  of  honesty,  of 
true  inner  integrity,  in  coming  into  the  great  values  of 
life,  we  must  be  honest  with  ourselves,  absolutely  honest  in 
our  original  experience. 

Similarly,  there  must  be  absolute  honesty  in  our  own 
witness.  Whether  for  the  witness  of  life  or  for  the 
witness  of  word,  we  must  be  utterly  true  to  ourselves,  to 
our  own  vision.  And  our  witness  must  be  honest  testi¬ 
mony,  therefore,  to  real  experience.  There  is  to  be  no 
careless  handing  on  of  what  we  have  not  ourselves  verified. 
The  first  paragraph  of  John’s  first  Epistle  precisely 
states  the  demand  which  is  made  upon  us  here  in  honest 
dealing  with  any  of  the  great  values  of  life :  “That  which 
we  have  heard,  that  which  we  have  seen  with  our  eyes,  that 
which  we  beheld,  and  our  hands  handled,  concerning  the 
Word  of  life  (and  the  life  was  manifested,  and  we  have 
seen,  and  bear  witness,  and  declare  unto  you  the  life,  the 
eternal  life,  which  was  with  the  Father,  and  was  mani¬ 
fested  unto  us)  ;  that  which  we  have  seen  and  heard 
declare  we  unto  you  also,  that  ye  also  may  have  fellow¬ 
ship  with  us.”  It  is  because  of  failure  at  this  point  that 
unjustified  fads  in  literary  and  art  criticism,  or  in 
scientific  or  philosophical  tradition,  or  in  moral  or  reli¬ 
gious  ideal  get  started.  And  it  is  by  this  insistence  on 
challenging  every  such  fad  or  tradition  by  honest  experi¬ 
ence  that  such  false  tendencies  are  stopped.  Some  day 


65 


The  Value  Approach 

the  unjustified  tradition  is  challenged,  out  of  the  honest 
experience  of  an  honest  man,  and  the  false  tradition  is 
broken,  and  thought  started  on  a  more  fruitful  way.  The 
unreal  parts  of  any  discourse  or  writing,  that  is  intended 
to  help  men  into  growing  appreciation  of  any  of  the  great 
values,  whether  esthetic  or  ethical  or  religious,  are  pretty 
certain  to  be  due  to  the  desire  to  give  what  is  called  a 
“systematic  presentation”  of  the  subject,  which  usually 
means  that  considerable  parts  of  the  “systematic  presen¬ 
tation”  are  not  real  and  vital  to  the  speaker  or  writer 
himself.  They  are  no  real  part  of  his  own  vivid  personal 
experience  and  therefore  no  real  part  of  his  genuine 
heartfelt  message.  There  is  a  story  of  a  distinguished 
preacher  who  got  into  the  midst  of  his  written  sermon,  to 
find  the  dismal  feeling  coming  over  him  that  he  was  saying 
nothing  and  getting  nowhere,  and  closed  his  manuscript 
with  the  remark:  “And  so  on  and  so  on  for  a  good  many 
more  pages  of  the  same  kind  of  stuff.  Let  us  pray.” 
Whether  true  or  not,  the  story  may  well  illustrate  the 
necessity  of  rigorously  cutting  out  all  that  is  unreal  in 
our  testimony  concerning  vital  things. 

IV 

But  once  more  in  finding  our  way  into  the  great  values 
of  life,  of  every  kind,  honesty  must  be  balanced  by 
modesty .  One  may  try  so  hard  to  be  honest  as  to  lean 
over  backwards,  and  to  deny  getting  anything  from  an¬ 
other,  to  deny  that  possible  introduction  by  others,  whose 
importance  we  have  seen.  There  is  a  balancing  quality 
here  needed,  though  it  is  by  no  means  in  the  direction  of 
any  return  to  unreality.  There  is,  however,  probably 
some  danger  of  our  feeling  that  reality  lies  only  within  the 
limits  of  our  own  original  discovery.  It  is  one  thing  to 


66 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

say:  I  do  not  find  anything  in  Shakespeare  or  in  this  fine 
music  or  in  this  great  ideal ;  I  cannot  honestly  claim  to 
have  reached  in  this  sphere  of  value  what  others  say  they 
have  reached.  That  may  well  be  true,  and  because  true, 
worth  saying  in  order  to  keep  the  atmosphere  of  our  life 
honest.  It  is  quite  another  thing,  however,  to  say: 
There  isn’t  anything  more  in  these  values — in  Shake¬ 
speare,  in  this  great  music,  in  this  moral  or  religious 
conviction — than  I  have  already  discovered.  That,  we 
can  be  sure,  is  not  true  and  is  certainly  not  modest.  And 
we  should  wish  to  be  modest  as  well  as  honest,  that  we 
may  attain  those  larger  measures  of  appreciation  of  values 
which  may  come  to  us  through  honest  sharing  in  the 
vision  of  another.  Our  limited  individual  experience  has 
not  exhausted  reality.  Much,  very  much,  in  the  line  of  all 
life’s  significant  values,  we  may  be  sure,  remains  to  be 
achieved.  And  the  much  of  vital  significance  that  those 
have  experienced,  who  have  given  most  time  and  thought 
to  these  realms  of  value,  may  well  encourage  us  to  con¬ 
tinue  our  attention  and  study;  though  we  are  absolutely 
determined  to  take  nothing  on  the  simple  say-so  of  an¬ 
other,  or  on  any  external  authority.  We  are  to  be  both 
honest  and  modest. 

In  the  light  of  the  experience  of  others  in  these  great 
realms  of  value,  we  may  then  reasonably  expect  much 
more,  even  continued  growth  in  these  different  values. 
The  sensible  attitude,  which  we  naturally  tend  to  take  in 
expecting  a  growing  appreciation  of  literature  and  music 
and  art  and  of  the  scientific  and  historic  and  philosophic 
spirit  and  interest,  may  quite  as  well  become  us  in  the 
realms  of  morals  and  religion,  though  absolute  honesty  is 
even  more  vital  at  these  points.  The  Bible,  thus,  it  is 
well  to  remember,  is  not  primarily  an  authority  at  all,  but 
a  record  of  preeminent  religious  experience,  of  honest 


67 


The  Value  Approach 

vision  and  insight.  And  we  may  reasonably  hope  for 
much  more  in  sharing  in  the  experience  of  these  great 
spiritual  seers  who  have  given  most  time  and  thought  at 
this  point,  just  as  in  the  case  of  other  values.  We  need 
the  testimony  of  the  great  seers  and  prophets,  we  need 
their  leading,  and  we  may  well  recognize  that  fact ;  though 
we  guard  punctiliously  against  every  trace  of  unreality, 
of  sham. 

If  we  are,  then,  sanely  planning  for  growing  apprecia¬ 
tion  of  the  great  values  of  life,  the  reason  why  we  are 
attending  thoughtfully  to  these  various  realms  of  value  is 
indeed  that  we  may  share,  but  share  honestly  and  really 
through  our  own  experience,  in  the  insights  of  the  great 
souls  who  have  here  achieved  most.  Herrmann’s  caution 
needs  constant  heeding:  “Religious  tradition  is  indis¬ 
pensable  for  us.  But  it  helps  us  only  if  it  leads  us  on  to 
listen  to  what  God  says  to  ourselves.  Real  faith  consists 
in  obeying  this  word  of  God.”  6  We  are  not,  that  is,  to 
take  passively  over  on  authority,  even  that  of  prophets 
and  apostles,  the  expressions  of  their  experience  as  our 
own;  but  we  are  to  expect  to  be  able  to  bear  similar  wit¬ 
ness  of  our  own  out  of  a  like  experience.  This  absolute 
but  modest  loyalty  to  our  own  experience  is  imperative 
for  our  own  life,  and  it  is  also  the  one  great  contribution 
which  it  is  possible  for  us  to  make  to  others, 

v 

In  discussing  now  the  one  great  way  into  all  the  values 
of  life,  we  have  recognized  the  fact  and  necessity  of  in¬ 
troduction  by  others,  and  of  honesty  and  modesty  on  the 
part  of  all  seekers  after  living  appreciation  of  the  great 
realms  of  worth.  We  have  been  assuming  some  general 

e  Faith  and  Morals,  p.  192. 


68 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

experience  of  these  values  on  the  part  of  men,  and  much 
larger  experience  by  some  than  by  others.  We  have 
recognized  that  there  are  something  like  geniuses  in  each 
realm  of  value,  who  represent  the  best  which  the  race  has 
so  far  achieved  in  that  particular  realm,  both  in  the 
creation  of  values  and  in  the  appreciation  of  them.  To 
these  creative  genuises  and  appreciative  or  interpretative 
genuises  the  world  owes  an  immeasurable  debt ;  for  they 
lead  men  on,  not  to  a  static  best  but  to  a  dynamic  best — 
not  to  a  fixed  but  to  a  moving  goal. 

Even  these  supreme  witnesses  to  value  in  any  realm 
must  be  marked  by  the  qualities  of  the  effective  witness. 
We  might,  therefore,  sum  up  the  whole  great  way  into  the 
values  of  life  in  the  single  counsel:  Stay  persistently  in 
the  presence  of  the  best  in  each  great  realm  of  value , — 
both  of  the  creative  best,  and  of  the  appreciative  or  inter¬ 
pretative  best.  This  one  all-inclusive  counsel,  of  staying 
persistently  in  the  presence  of  the  best,  is  precisely  that  of 
Paul’s,  when  he  thinks  of  all  the  best  that  life  holds: 
“  Whatsoever  things  are  true,  whatsoever  things  are 
honorable,  whatsoever  things  are  just,  whatsoever  things 
are  pure,  whatsoever  things  are  lovely,  whatsoever  things 
are  of  good  report ;  if  there  be  any  virtue,  and  if  there 
be  any  praise,  think  on  these  things.”  As  one  runs  over 
this  great  list  of  values,  one  expects  something  much 
more  from  Paul  than  his  quiet  word  “think  on  these 
things.”  Yet  this  is  the  essence  of  all  growth. 

Whatever  the  realm  of  value,  from  this  point  of  view, 
the  counsel  must  be  practically  the  same :  stay  persistently 
in  the  presence  of  the  best,  in  the  sphere  in  which  you  seek 
achievement,  with  honest  response ;  the  rest  will  largely 
take  care  of  itself.  Hear  the  best  in  music ;  see  the  best 
in  art;  read  the  best  in  literature;  stay  with  the  best 
creators  and  interpreters  of  the  scientific  and  historic  and 


69 


The  Value  Approach 

philosophic  spirit;  stay  with  the  best  in  friendship;  stay 
with  the  best  in  moral  and  religious  insight  and  achieve¬ 
ment;  and  in  all  with  honest  response.  This  is  the  one 
great  central  road  to  enlargement  and  enrichment  of  life. 
It  is  natural  that  Richard  Brook  should  say: 

“As  in  the  case  of  music  or  art  we  train  our  perceptions 
and  cultivate  our  taste  by  the  help  of  the  great  musicians  and 
artists,  so  also  we  must  train  our  religious  perceptions  and 
cultivate  our  spiritual  sense  by  the  help  of  those  who  have  a 
special  genius  for  religion.  .  .  .  How  do  we  recognize  or 
test  genius  in  art?  There  is,  perhaps,  a  threefold  test. 
First,  the  genius  is  the  man  who  possesses  special  faculties 
of  insight  which  enable  him  to  catch  some  glimpse  of  truth 
or  beauty  which  the  ordinary  man  cannot  see.  .  .  .  And, 
secondly,  he  is  one  who  is  able  through  the  medium  of  his 
work  to  create,  in  those  who  study  it,  emotions  akin  to  those 
which  in  him  inspired  that  work.  Not  only  does  he  see  a 
vision  himself,  but  he  opens  our  eyes  so  that  we  can  see  it 
too.  .  .  .  And,  thirdly,  the  work  of  the  genius  must  stand 
the  test  of  time.  .  .  .  If  we  apply  this  threefold  test  in 
our  search  for  the  religious  genius — for  those  by  whose  help 
we  can  train  our  religious  sense — it  is,  first  and  most,  to  the 
Bible  that  the  facts  of  history  and  of  experience  point  us. 
The  Bible  is  for  religion  what  the  great  masters  are  for  art. 
It  is,  as  has  been  well  said,  like  ‘a  picture  gallery  of  the 
old  masters.’  .  .  .  ‘As  well  imagine  a  man  with  a  sense  for 
sculpture,’  it  has  been  said,  ‘not  cultivating  it  by  the  help 
of  the  remains  of  Greek  art,  or  a  man  with  a  sense  of  poetry 
not  cultivating  it  with  the  help  of  Homer  or  Shakespeare, 
as  a  man  with  a  sense  of  conduct’  (or,  we  may  add,  with  a 
sense  of  religion)  ‘not  cultivating  it  by  the  help  of  the 
Bible.’  ’’ 7 

The  best,  however,  as  we  have  already  intimated,  is  not 
to  he  regarded  as  a  static  best ,  but  as  a  moving  goal, 
calling  always  for  the  open  mind,  for  growth  in  every 

7  Foundations ,  pp.  6S-4,  66-7. 


70 


* Seeing  Life  Whole 

value.  What  McDougall  says  of  moral  growth  applies 
in  much  the  same  way  to  growth  in  all  the  values :  “The 
moral  tradition  of  any  society  lives,  in  its  fullest,  com- 
pletest  form,  only  in  the  strong  moral  sentiments  of  a 
comparatively  few  individuals,  those  who  are  expressively 
called  ‘the  salt  of  the  earth.’  ”  8 

Nor  is  the  best  to  be  narrowly  interpreted.  At  every 
point  we  need  to  take  account  of  the  wide  range  of  man’s 
being,  and  to  see  that  the  best  in  every  realm  must  be 
tested  by  the  whole  man  and  by  no  mere  fraction  of  him. 
The  best,  too,  to  which  we  are  to  give  our  time  and  atten¬ 
tion  must  be  verified  by  the  experience  of  the  race,  as  the 
enduring,  as  what  bears  the  test  of  time,  what  wears  well, 
what  the  generations  find  men  constantly  returning  to.  An 
able  English  musical  critic  has  recently  insisted  that  the 
machines  for  musical  reproduction  tend  inevitably  to  sift 
out  the  better  music,  for  it  is  the  better  music  that  wears. 
It  is  silly  to  think  that  we  can  learn  nothing  from  the 
experience  of  the  race,  and  make  no  progress  through  that 
experience  in  the  knowledge  of  what  is  truly  best.  The 
best  in  any  realm  of  value,  into  the  appreciation  of  which 
we  seek  to  come,  includes,  then,  as  we  have  seen,  both  the 
creative  best  in  that  realm — the  creative  artists,  music¬ 
ians,  poets,  scientists,  historians,  philosophers,  friends, 
and  heroes  in  morals  and  religion — and  the  interpretative 
or  appreciative  best — the  competent  critics  in  all  these 
realms.  The  creators  of  value  are  not  always  the  best 
interpreters  of  value.  But  both  the  creators  and  the 
critics,  if  they  are  absolutely  honest  in  their  witness,  have 
much  to  give.  They  are  the  supreme  witnesses  in  all  these 
realms  of  value. 

This  implies  that  the  great  law  of  all  growth  into  the 
best  of  all  kinds  is  the  law  of  personal  association*— 
9  Social  Psychology,  p.  220, 


71 


The  Value  Approach 

the  giving  of  time  and  thought  and  attention  to  the  best. 
The  law  of  association  becomes  thus  a  supreme  law:  we 
become  like  those  with  whom  we  constantly  are,  to  whom 
we  look  with  admiration  and  love,  and  who  give  themselves 
unstintedly  to  us.  This  applies  primarily,  of  course,  in 
those  associations  which  make  for  character,  but  it  holds 
for  all  values.  We  cannot  cram  culture  or  insight  or 
character  or  friendship  or  religion.  McDougall  points 
out  that  among  all  the  persons  who  surround  a  child  in 
its  growth,  “some  will  impress  their  abstract  sentiments 
upon  him  more  than  others ;  and,  in  the  main,  those  that 
so  impress  him  will  be  those  whose  power,  or  achievements, 
or  position,  evoke  his  admiration.  Of  all  the  affective 
attitudes  of  one  man  towards  another,  admiration  is  that 
which  renders  him  most  susceptible  to  the  other’s  in¬ 
fluence.”  9 

It  is  important  also  to  see  that  there  is  no  need  in  any 
realm  of  reality  or  of  genuine  value  to  pretend  or  to  put 
pressure  upon  the  mind  to  try  to  believe.  The  real,  after 
all,  will  take  care  of  itself.  Our  one  business  concerning 
all  that  is  best  is  simply  to  let  the  great  value  make  its 
own  legitimate  unforced  impression  upon  us.  All  that 
is  needed  on  our  part,  in  the  last  analysis,  is  an  absolutely 
honest  response.  Our  one  attitude,  therefore,  concerning 
the  great  value,  the  great  reality,  the  great  personality, 
is  not  to  put  pressure  upon  our  own  minds  or  upon  the 
minds  of  others  to  believe  in  them;  and  not  primarily 
either  with  ourselves  or  others  to  defend  them  or  to  argue 
for  them,  but  simply  to  give  them  opportunity  with  us, 
and  to  do  what  we  may  to  help  others  too  to  give  that 
opportunity.  The  best,  thus,  judges  us  rather  than  we  it. 
We  need  have  no  anxiety  for  that  best,  for  Shakespeare 
or  Beethoven  or  Raphael  or  Plato  or  Christ.  They 
9  Op.  cit.,  p.  222. 


72 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

do  not  need  our  defense;  they  need  only  opportunity. 
And  we  have  only  to  give  them  this  opportunity  with  us, 
through  time  and  thought  and  persistent  attention,  to 
insure  the  enlargement  and  enrichment  of  life  which  only 
the  best  can  give.  We  are  to  stay  persistently  in  the 
presence  of  the  best  with  honest  response. 


VI 

But  before  we  turn  from  our  thesis,  that  the  way  into 
all  the  great  values  of  life  is  essentially  the  same  for  all 
these  values,  it  is  well  clearly  to  recognize  that,  in  dealing 
with  so  wide  a  range  of  values,  it  is  inevitable  that  the  way 
into  these  values  should  not  mean  precisely  the  same  thing 
for  all  the  values.  What  is  contended  for  is  a  broad 
analogy ,  not  an  abstract  identity.  For  example,  that 
“honest  response”  which  we  have  just  said  is  demanded 
in  the  case  of  all  the  values  means  a  different  thing  for  the 
ethical  and  religious  values  from  what  it  means  for  the 
esthetic  values.  The  ethical  and  religious  call  not  merely 
for  esthetic  admiration  but  for  personal  commitment  of 
will.  In  the  case  of  the  ethical  and  religious  there  is  no 
honest  response  otherwise.  And  yet  even  so,  the  analogy 
for  all  the  values  is  closer  than  it  may  seem  at  first. 
There  is  at  least  an  ethical  element  in  the  case  of  every 
value,  which  is  insisted  on  in  the  demand  for  the  hon¬ 
est  response.  For  even  esthetic  appreciation  requires 
honesty  and  modesty — freedom  from  sham — as  we  have 
seen,  and  these  are  inevitably  ethical  qualities.  The 
scientific  spirit,  too,  in  its  demand  for  honest  open-mind¬ 
edness  and  for  an  absolutely  truthful  report  upon  a  situa¬ 
tion,  is  in  itself  a  moral  demand.  And  the  historic  spirit 
and  philosophic  spirit  carry  in  like  manner  moral  elements 


The  Value  Approach  78 

in  them.  And  every  friendship  worth  talking  about  has 
a  deep  ethical  basis. 

Moreover,  to  go  a  little  deeper,  the  race  has  probably 
been  greatly  right  in  habitually  associating  in  its 
thought  the  beautiful  with  the  true  and  the  good.  We 
never  get,  in  fact,  the  ideal  embodiment  of  the  ideal  in 
morals  without  bringing  in  the  note  of  the  beautiful. 
McDougall,  therefore,  is  surely  justified  in  saying:  “It 
is  worth  noting  in  passing  that  in  many  persons  aesthetic 
appreciation  of  the  beauty  of  fine  character  and  conduct 
may  play  a  large  part  in  the  genesis  of  the  ideal  of  conduct 
and  of  the  sentiment  of  love  for  this  ideal.  Not  all 
admiration  is  aesthetic  admiration,  but,  if  the  object  that 
we  admire  on  account  of  its  strength  or  excellence  of  any 
kind,  presents  a  complex  of  harmoniously  organized  and 
centralised  relations  and  activities,  the  mere  contempla¬ 
tion  of  its  pleases  us,  in  so  far  as  we  are  capable  of  grasp¬ 
ing  the  harmony  of  its  complex  features ;  that  is  to  say, 
it  affords  us  an  aesthetic  satisfaction,  and  therefore  has 
a  certain  value  for  us  and  becomes  an  object  of  desire.”  10 
As  I  have  elsewhere  said,  the  frequent  profoundly  moving 
and  thrilling  power  of  the  beautiful  can  hardly  be  under¬ 
stood  at  all,  except  upon  such  a  hypothesis  as  that  of 
Lotze,  that  the  beautiful  thing,  so  clearly  seen  in  a  mere 
•  fragment  of  the  world,  where  we  have  no  right  to  expect 
it,  seems  to  us  a  kind  of  divine  prophecy  and  promise  of 
the  ultimate  harmony  of  all.  And  this  is  an  ethical  and 
religious  ideal  as  well  as  an  esthetic. 

Moreover,  it  may  well  be  noted  that  the  way  into  all 
the  great  values  of  life  may  well  be  in  essence  one  way, 
when  we  remember  that  all  values  go  bach  finally  to  per¬ 
sons.  All  the  esthetic  values  of  music  and  art  and 
literature;  all  the  intellectual  values  of  the  scientific,  the 
10  Op.  cit.,  p.  227. 


74* 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

historic  and  the  philosophic  spirit ;  all  the  values  of  friend¬ 
ship  ;  and  all  the  values  of  moral  and  religious  ideal,  are, 
after  all,  but  a  partial  revelation  of  the  riches  of  some 
personal  life.  So  that  what  Kaftan  calls  our  life  task  is 
naturally  to  enter  with  appreciation  and  conviction  into 
the  great  personalities  of  history.  This  would  be  most 
of  all  to  share  in  their  experience  of  values.  For  the  great 
facts  of  history  are  persons,  and  in  all  the  ranges  of 
value  we  have  to  do  with  the  great  souls,  with  the  pioneers 
and  spiritual  adventurers  in  all  realms,  with  discoverers, 
and  seers,  and  heroes,  and  prophets — and  with  their  great 
witness  by  life  and  word.  For  we  live  in  large  part  by 
them.  As  James  says:  “We  draw  new  life  from  the 
heroic  example.  The  prophet  has  drunk  more  deeply 
than  anyone  of  the  cup  of  bitterness,  but  his  counte¬ 
nance  is  so  unshaken  and  he  speaks  such  mighty  words  of 
cheer  that  his  will  becomes  our  will  and  our  life  is  kindled 
at  his  own.”  No  wonder  that  Browning  makes  the  aged 
John  say  of  Christ : 

Then  stand  before  that  fact,  that  Life  and  Death, 

Stand  there  at  gaze,  till  it  dispart,  dispread. 

As  though  a  star  should  open  out,  all  sides, 

Grow  the  world  on  you,  as  it  is  my  world.11 

We  are  to  stay  persistently  in  the  presence  of  the  best 
with  honest  response. 
u  A  Death  in  the  Desert. 


I 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  PERSONAE  AND  ETHICAE  APPROACH1 

I 

In  the  personal  and  ethical  approach  to  a  Christian 
philosophy  of  life,  I  am  seeking  the  suggestions  and 
guidance  of  what  I  have  come  to  believe  to  be  a  supreme 
ethical  and  religious  principle — the  principle  of  reverence 
for  personality .  I  mean  by  reverence  for  personality 
the  sense  of  the  priceless  value  and  inviolable  sacredness 
of  every  person.  I  mean  what  Kant  meant  by  his  Prac¬ 
tical  Imperative :  “So  act  as  to  treat  humanity,  whether 
in  thine  own  person  or  in  that  of  any  other,  in  every  case 
as  an  end  withal,  never  as  a  means  only.”  I  mean  what 
Hegel  meant  by  his  summary  of  the  moral  law:  “Be  a 
person,  and  respect  the  personality  of  others.”  I  mean 
what  Royce  meant  in  his  contention  that  an  essential 
contempt  for  the  personality  of  others  underlies  all  moral 
outrages.  I  mean  what  Christ  meant  in  his  conception  of 
every  man  as  a  child  of  God  and  therefore  of  priceless 
value  and  inviolable  sacredness  to  God. 

‘I  am  attempting  here  a  somewhat  complete  treatment  of  the 
principle  of  reverence  for  personality,  which  has  come  to  seem  to 
me  a  truly  supreme  principle  and  which  I  have  briefly  discussed 
elsewhere,  especially  in  certain  sections  of  the  last  two  chapters  of 
Rational  Living,  in  one  section  of  The  Laws  of  Friendship  Human 
and  Divine,  in  sections  XXIII-XXV  of  The  Seeming  Unreality  of 
the  Spiritual  Life,  and  in  the  introductory  chapter  of  The  Moral 
and  Religious  Challenge  of  Our  Times.  If  the  principle  is  so 
supreme  as  I  have  come  to  believe  it  to  be,  it  is  particularly  needed 
for  the  personal  and  ethical  approach  to  our  whole  problem  of  a 
Christian  philosophy  of  life. 


75 


76 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

The  principle  is  a  supreme  principle  as  giving  a  basis 
equally  for  both  a  true  individualism  and  a  true  socialism . 
For  the  principle  is  one,  not  two,  since  respect  for  per¬ 
sonality  involves  both  basic  respect  for  one’s  own  person¬ 
ality — self-respect,  a  true  individualism,  and  respect  for 
the  personality  of  others — a  true  socialism.  So  far, 
therefore,  from  being  essentially  antagonistic,  a  true 
individualism  and  a  true  socialism  are  inseparable, 
developing  together  from  the  beginning,  each  requiring 
the  other  and  constantly  interworking  with  the  other. 
Thus  McDougall  says:  “We  find  that  the  idea  of  the  self 
and  the  self-regarding  sentiment  are  essentially  social 
products ;  that  their  development  is  effected  by  constant 
interplay  between  personalities,  between  the  self  and 
society;  that  for  this  reason,  the  complex  conception  of 
self  thus  attained  implies  constant  reference  to  others  and 
to  society  in  general,  and  is,  in  fact,  not  merely  a  concep¬ 
tion  of  self,  but  always  of  one’s  self  in  relation  to  other 
selves.  This  social  genesis  of  the  idea  of  self  lies  at  the 
root  of  morality.”  2 

That  the  principle  of  reverence  for  personality  is  a 
supreme  ethical  principle  is  implied  not  only  in  McDou- 
gall’s  account  of  the  development  of  self-consciousness,  but 
also  in  the  position  taken  by  Kant  and  Hegel  and  Royce. 
It  is  likewise  reflected  in  the  importance  given  by  ethical 
writers  to  the  development  of  personality.3  In  his  dis¬ 
cussion  of  happiness  as  compared  with  pleasure  and  joy, 
McDougall  makes  plain  how  our  whole  ethical  aim  gathers 
about  the  development  of  personalities: 

“Happiness  arises  from  the  harmonious  operation  of  all 
the  sentiments  of  a  well-organized  and  unified  personality, 

1  Social  Psychology,  p.  180. 

*Cf.  Miss  Calkins,  The  Good  Man  and  the  Good,  p.  48;  Hobhouse 
on  “The  Principle  of  Harmony,”  in  The  Rational  Good,  pp.  138  ff. 


The  Personal  and  Ethical  Approach  77 

one  in  which  the  principal  sentiments  support  one  another  in 
a  succession  of  actions  all  of  which  tend  towards  the  same 
or  closely  allied  and  harmonious  ends.  Hence  the  richer,  the 
more  highly  developed,  the  more  completely  unified  or  in¬ 
tegrated  is  the  personality,  the  more  capable  is  it  of  sus¬ 
tained  happiness  in  spite  of  inter-current  pains  of  all 
sorbs.  ...  If  this  account  of  happiness  is  correct,  it  follows 
that  to  add  to  the  sum  of  happiness  is  not  merely  to  add  to 
the  sum  of  pleasures,  but  is  rather  to  contribute  to  the  de¬ 
velopment  of  higher  forms  of  personality,  personalities 
capable,  not  merely  of  pleasure,  as  the  animals  are,  but,  of 
happiness.  If  this  conclusion  is  sound,  it  is  of  no  small 
importance  to  the  social  sciences ;  it  goes  far  to  reconcile 
the  doctrine  of  such  moralists  as  T.  H.  Green  with  that  of  the 
more  enlightened  utilitarians;  for  the  one  party  insists  that 
the  proper  end  of  moral  effort  is  the  development  of  per¬ 
sonalities,  the  other  that  it  is  the  increase  of  happiness,  and 
these  we  now  see  to  be  identical  ends.”  4 

The  principle  of  reverence  for  personality  is  a  supreme 
religious  principle  also,  as  suggesting  the  reasons  for  the 
way  that  God  takes  in  his  treatment  of  all  men.  For  the 
principle  throws  light  on  many  difficult  questions  in  our 
understanding  of  the  providence  of  God,  including  the 
seeming  unreality  of  the  spiritual  life  and  the  constantly 
recurring  problem  of  evil. 

The  principle  of  reverence  for  personality  is  also  the 
principle  that  has  even  unconsciously  guided  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  history  and  given  the  surest  test  of  any  given 
stage  of  civilization.  We  can  test  a  civilization  perhaps 
most  surely  by  its  treatment  of  children  and  women,  just 
because  this  indicates  its  intrinsic  respect  for  personality, 
since  children  and  women,  as  the  most  defenseless  groups, 
cannot  compel  respect.  A  delicate  sense  of  the  priceless 
value  and  inviolable  sacredness  of  every  person  becomes 
thus  a  supreme  test  of  civilization. 

*  Op.  cit,  pp.  156-7, 


78 


Seeing  Life  Whole 


n 

We  shall  best  see  the  fundamental  nature  of  the  prin¬ 
ciple  of  reverence  for  personality  by  noting  that  our 
whole  constitution  looks  to  personal  relations ;  that  in 
mind  and  body  we  seem  to  be  made  for  them. 

On  the  physical  side ,  man’s  long  infancy — the  most 
remarkable  physical  difference  of  man  from  the  lower 
animals — requires  for  the  human  child  long  parental  care, 
and  therefore  what  Drummond  calls  the  evolution  of  a 
mother  and  the  evolution  of  a  father.5  Man  is  plainly 
made  in  this  respect  for  personal  relations.  This  long 
infancy  is  probably  connected  with  two  other  momentous 
changes,  as  John  Fiske  points  out, — with  the  development 
of  man’s  greater  brain  power  and  with  man’s  greater 
educability.6  Man’s  capacity,  as  a  tool-using  animal, 
for  the  expression  of  himself  in  work,  especially  in  his 
impress  on  his  surroundings,  also  suggests  how  truly  he  is 
made  for  self-revelation,  of  a  kind  hardly  open  to  the 
brute  at  all,  and  so  for  personal  relations.  The  physical 
basis  of  his  capacity  for  speech — for  there  plainly  is  such 
a  physical  as  well  as  psychical  basis  for  speech — also 
shows  that  man  is  made  as  no  other  animal,  for  self-revela- 
tion  and  personal  relations. 

On  the  mental  side ,  the  sex  and  parental  instincts  and 
the  gregarious  instinct,  to  name  no  others,  look  directly 
to  society  and  to  developing  personal  relations.  Even 
self-consciousness,  as  we  have  already  seen,  is  socially7 
developed.  An  engrossing  egoism,  therefore,  is  inevitably 
self-defeating.  It  ultimately  arrays  all  against  itself. 
Joy  in  victory  over  another,  on  the  other  hand,  requires 
the  recognition  that  the  other  is  at  least  nearly  as  good 

*  Ascent  of  Man ,  pp.  267  ff. 

•  Destiny  of  Man,  pp.  51  ff. 


The  Personal  and  Ethical  Approach  T9 

as  oneself,  for  there  is  no  glory  in  a  victory  over  an  essen¬ 
tial  inferior.  The  remarkable  effect  upon  us  of  the  praise 
and  blame  of  others,  of  their  approval  and  disapproval, 
is  another  illustration  of  how  surely  in  the  very  consti¬ 
tution  of  our  minds  we  are  made,  once  more,  for  personal 
relations.  Our  satisfaction  in  praise,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  tempered  by  the  fact  that  the  praiser  is  necessarily 
recognized  as  in  some  sense  superior,  so  that  our  egoism 
at  that  point  also  is  checked.  From  the  lowest  to  the 
highest  in  human  society,  too,  the  law  seems  to  hold  that 
we  feel  the  need  as  human  beings  of  recognition  by  others. 
English  public  school  boys  know  no  severer  punishment  to 
visit  upon  a  recalcitrant  schoolmate  than  to  do  what  they 
call  “sending  him  to  Coventry”;  and  to  send  a  boy  to 
Coventry  is  to  condemn  him  to  essential  isolation — ignor¬ 
ing  him  absolutely,  paying  no  attention  to  anything  that 
he  says  or  does.  And  this  discipline,  it  is  said,  is  enough 
soon  to  bring  the  hardest  to  terms.  And  at  the  other  end 
of  the  social  scale,  in  Browning’s  Instans  Tyrannus ,  the 
old  tyrant  feels  this  same  imperative  need  of  recognition 
by  others,  and  cannot  be  satisfied  that  even  the  humblest 
and  most  obscure  of  his  subjects,  while  he  bows  his  body, 
should  not  also  manifestly  bow  his  will,  so  he  sets  his 
“five  wits  on  the  stretch  to  inveigle  the  wretch.”  In  all 
these  mental  characteristics  man  is  plainly  made  for  per¬ 
sonal  relations. 

We  may  well  see  also  that  the  whole  man,  in  the  full 
range  of  his  being,  comes  out  onl*y  in  personal  relations. 
Things  call  man  out  but  in  small  part.  Only  another 
significant  personality  can  arouse  our  full  response.  For 
this  very  reason,  probably,  persons  are  for  us  the  most 
certain  facts ,  the  most  important  facts ,  and  the  most 
abiding  facts  of  our  world .  They  are,  in  the  first  place, 
the  most  certain  facts  because  we  find  it  practically  impos- 


80 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

sible  to  deny  their  existence,  although  there  ij  no  such 
impossibility  for  our  minds  in  questioning  the  reality  of 
outward  things.  They  are  the  most  important  facts  be¬ 
cause  they  give  us  the  highest  and  most  significant  re¬ 
lations  we  know.  And  they  are  the  most  abiding  facts, 
if  the  poets  of  all  times  and  lands  are  right  in  their  asser¬ 
tion  of  the  immortality  of  love.  For  love  can  exist  only 
in  a  personal  life,  and  it  is  not  more  enduring  than  the  per¬ 
son  whose  deepest  quality  it  is.  In  all  these  ways,  then, 
we  are  made  most  of  all  for  personal  relations ;  and  it 
would  seem  to  follow  that  the  laws  of  the  moral  world 
are  social  laws,  the  laws  of  personal  relations.  It  would 
then  further  follow  that  the  supreme  condition  of  living 
must  be  the  supreme  condition  of  fine  personal  relations, 
and  that  supreme  condition  I  believe  to  be  the  spirit  of 
reverence  for  personality.  We  need  to  trace  out  its  sig¬ 
nificance  in  some  detail. 

Reverence  for  personality,  as  we  have  already  seen,  in¬ 
cludes  both  self-respect  and  respect  for  others. 

m 

First  of  all,  reverence  for  personality  includes  self- 
respect.  And  by  self-respect  is  meant  neither  self-conceit 
nor  self-exaltation  on  the  one  hand  nor  self-depreciation 
on  the  other.  These  depend,  rather,  on  temperament, 
and  there  are  plainly  two  naturally  opposing  tem¬ 
peraments  here, — one  temperament  tending  strongly 
to  self-exaltation,  the  other  with  equal  strength  to  self¬ 
depreciation  ;  and  both  are  alike  undesirable.  But  true 
self-respect  is  the  recognition  of  oneself  as  a  member  of 
the  whole  of  society,  with  one’s  own  individuality  and 
unique  contribution  to  make,  side  by  side  with  others. 
The  street  Arab  puts  the  matter  not  so  unphilosophically 


The  Personal  and  Ethical  Approach  81 

when  he  says  to  his  fellow  Arab:  “You  are  not  the  only 
pebble  on  the  beach” ;  for  he  recognizes,  philosophically 
enough,  that  the  other  is  a  pebble,  even  as  he  himself  is, 
but  he  reminds  him  that  he  is  not  the  only  pebble.  Paul’s 
organic  view  of  society  underlies  a  true  self-respect : 
“Not  to  think  of  himself  more  highly  than  he  ought  to 
think;  but  so  to  think  as  to  think  soberly,  according  as 
God  hath  dealt  to  each  man  a  measure  of  faith.”  And 
this  genuine  self-respect  is  kept  from  conceit  by  two  great 
considerations :  first,  by  the  sense  of  the  large  and  in¬ 
dispensable  contribution  which  comes  to  us  steadily  from 
the  other  members  of  society,  and  our  consequent  immeas¬ 
urable  debt  to  them;  and,  second,  by  our  sense  of  falling 
far  short  of  attaining  what  must  be  God’s  ideal  for  our¬ 
selves.  Jean  Ingelow’s  old  fisher  preacher  marked  the 
difference  between  true  and  false  humility: 

The  day  was,  I  have  been  afraid  of  pride — 

Hard  man’s  hard  pride;  but  now  I  am  afraid 
Of  man’s  humility.  I  counsel  you, 

By  the  great  God’s  great  humbleness,  and  by 
His  pity,  be  not  humble  over-much.7 

The  self-respecting  man,  then,  without  either  self-con¬ 
ceit  or  self-depreciation,  may  believe  in  his  genuine 
significance,  that  he  is  “called  to  an  imperishable  work 
in  the  world”  and  hence  must  make  necessarily  great 
“claims  on  life.”  Such  self-respect ,  now,  is  necessary  and 
basic  for  character ,  to  be  what  one  ought ;  for  influence , 
to  count  as  one  can ;  for  happiness ,  to  enjoy  what  one  may, 
— what  it  is  given  a  true  man  to  enjoy.  It  is  worth  while 
to  examine  the  prime  importance  of  self-respect,  from  this 
threefold  point  of  view. 

First  of  all,  self-respect  is  necessary  for  one's  own 
7 Brothers  and  a  Sermon. 


82 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

character.  For  the  self-respect  which  we  hold  to  be  due 
to  ourselves  is  the  only  measure  we  have,  in  the  first  place, 
for  our  understanding  of  others.  For  there  is  just  one 
bit  of  reality  in  the  universe  that  we  can  know  from  within, 
namely,  ourselves.  And  this  self  of  ours  becomes  for  us 
necessarily  the  key  to  the  universe,  especially  the  key  to 
all  other  personalities.  In  the  second  place,  self-respect 
is  the  only  measure  we  have  for  our  interpretation  of  the 
Golden  Rule.  For  what  it  means  that  we  should  do  unto 
others  what  we  would  that  men  should  do  unto  us,  evidently 
depends  on  our  own  claims  on  life,  on  what  we  believe  to  be 
due  to  ourselves.  As  Lotze  says :  “When  an  Indian  tortures 
his  captured  enemy,  this  is  no  proof  that  he  is  not  guided 
by  some  Idea  of  right;  by  so  acting  he  affords  the  con¬ 
quered  man  an  opportunity  of  upholding  his  honour  by 
that  silent  endurance  and  contempt  of  pain  which  seem 
to  him  the  ideal  of  manly  perfection ;  and  he  himself,  if  the 
same  unlucky  fate  should  befall  him,  endures  as  great  suf¬ 
fering  with  equal  fortitude.”  8  If  one  asks  only  for  food 
and  shelter  for  himself,  that  will  compass  his  full  sense  of 
obligation  for  others.  On  the  contrary,  if  one  asks  much 
— a  man’s  full  life  in  its  largest  and  highest  range — then 
that  will  be  the  measure  of  his  sense  of  obligation  to  other 
men  also. 

Whatever,  therefore,  tends  essentially  to  lessen  or 
cheapen  our  own  self-respect  affects  at  once  our  respect 
for  others  also.  For  example,  if  we  have  lost  faith  in  our 
own  immortality,  we  may  for  a  time  be  able  to  forget  the 
sense  of  intolerable  loss  in  work  for  others.  But  the  time 
inevitably  comes  when  we  must  see  that  others,  too,  have 
now  become  only  creatures  of  a  day,  not  “called  to  an 
imperishable  work  in  the  world,”  and  thus  not  endowed 
with  “the  power  of  an  endless  life.”  McDougall  speaks 

9  Microcosmus,  Vol.  I,  p.  707. 


The  Personal  and  Ethical  Approach  83 

as  a  psychologist  when  he  says :  “Thus  if  a  man  believes 
that  he  has,  or  is,  a  substantial  soul  that  can  continue 
to  enjoy  consciousness  after  the  death  of  the  body, 
that  belief  is  a  feature  of  his  total  conception  of  his  self 
which  may,  and  of  course  often  does,  profoundly  influ¬ 
ence  his  conduct.”  9  That  means  that  we  cannot  lose  our 
own  sense  of  immortality  and  still  keep  the  same  sense  of 
the  value  of  others  or  of  the  significance  of  work  for 
them.  Whatever  we  may  think  of  immortality,  we  may 
not  rationally  ignore  this  consideration.  John  Stuart 
Mill  is  candid  enough  to  admit  this  influence  of  the  hope  of 
immortality.  “The  beneficial  influence  of  such  a  hope,” 
Orr  10  quotes  him  as  saying,  “is  far  from  trifling.  It 
makes  life  and  human  nature  a  far  greater  thing  to  the 
feelings,  and  gives  greater  strength  as  well  as  greater 
solemnity  to  all  the  sentiments  which  are  awakened  in  us 
by  our  fellow-creatures,  and  by  mankind  at  large.  .  .  . 
But  the  benefit  consists  less  in  the  presence  of  any  specific 
hope  than  in  the  enlargement  of  the  general  scale  of  the 
feelings  ;  the  loftier  aspirations  being  no  longer  kept  down 
by  a  sense  of  the  insignificance  of  human  life — by  the 
disastrous  feeling  of  ‘not  worth  while.’  ”  Sully,  in  his 
work  on  Pessimism,  says  also :  “I  would  only  say  that  if 
men  are  to  abandon  all  hope  of  a  future  life,  the  loss,  in 
point  of  cheering  and  sustaining  influence,  will  be  a  vast 
one,  and  one  not  to  be  made  good,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  by 
any  new  idea  of  services  to  collective  humanity.11  All 
kinds  of  substitutes,  therefore,  for  personal  immortality 
seem  likely  inevitably  to  lessen  the  significance  of  persons 
now  in  our  relations  with  them ;  though  there  are  undoubt¬ 
edly  considerable  temperamental  differences  between  men 

8  Op.  cit.,  p.  182. 

10  The  Christian  View  of  Ood  in  the  World,  pp.  159-160. 

u  Pessimism,  p.  317,  quoted  by  Orr,  op.  cit,,  p.  79. 


84  Seeing  Life  Whole 

in  their  feeling  about  the  significance  and  value  of  personal 
immortality. 

But  there  is  still  another  way  in  which  any  cheapening 
of  ourselves  endangers  right  relations  with  others.  One 
of  the  poets  expresses  the  danger: 

The  hands  that  love  us  often  are  the  hands 

That  softly  close  our  eyes  and  draw  us  earth-ward. 

We  give  them  all  the  largess  of  our  life — 

Not  this,  not  all  the  world,  contenteth  them. 

Till  we  renounce  our  rights  as  living  souls. 

And,  as  Hugh  Black  says,  “we  cannot  renounce  our  rights 
as  living  souls  without  losing  our  souls.”  Respect  for 
oneself,  therefore,  as  an  individual  and  significant  member 
of  the  whole  of  human  society  means  that,  for  the  sake 
not  only  of  ourselves  but  for  the  sake  of  all  with  whom  we 
have  to  do,  our  first  basic,  all-inclusive  duty  is  to  be  true 
to  the  trust  of  our  own  individuality.  There  is,  therefore, 
a  point  beyond  which  we  must  not  allow  ourselves  to  go 
in  seeming  service  of  others  or  in  seeming  sacrifice  of 
ourselves  to  others.  Mrs.  Browning  makes  Romney 
Leigh  say: 

I  have  a  pattern  on  my  nail, 

And  I  will  carve  the  world  after  it. 

So  the  “exploiter  of  souls,”  to  use  the  deft  phrase  of  one 
of  our  novelists,  has  a  pattern  on  his  nail,  by  which  he 
feels  perfectly  competent  to  judge  and  direct  the  lives  of 
all  about  him.  We  cannot  yield  to  this  kind  of  exploita¬ 
tion,  and  still  keep  either  our  character  or  our  best 
influence.  When  we  have  thus  yielded  to  the  desecration 
of  our  own  personality,  we  have  done  exactly  that  which 
Christ  called  casting  our  pearls  before  swine.  For  the 
door  is  so  closed  on  all  the  finest  personal  relations. 


The  Personal  and  Ethical  Approach  85 

Self-knowledge,  self-reverence,  self-control, 

These  three  alone  lead  life  to  sovereign  power. 

And  self-reverence  is  basic. 

Self-respect,  then,  lies  everywhere  at  the  base  of  char¬ 
acter.  Whatever  lowers  self-respect  lowers  all  personal 
relations. 

Self-respect ,  in  the  second  place,  is  necessary  for  one's 
own  influence.  Ultimately  we  have  only  ourselves  to  give . 
This  is  our  one  great  contribution,  our  truest  influence, 
our  one  great  trust.  The  largeness  and  significance  of 
that  gift  of  ourselves  depend  upon  the  largeness  and  sig¬ 
nificance  of  the  self  given.  We  owe,  too,  in  all  personal  re¬ 
lations,  with  God  or  men,  a  growing  self — growing  in  the 
line  of  our  unique  individuality  but  constantly  enriching. 
If,  then,  we  do  not  value  our  own  individuality,  our  own 
unique  possible  contribution,  but  fall  into  a  mistaken 
imitation  of  others,  we  have  practically  no  significant 
contribution  to  make — nothing  worth  while  to  give.  For 
if  two  of  us  are  just  alike,  one  of  our  philosophers  has 
said,  one  of  us  can  be  spared;  and  plainly  it  will  be  the 
imitation,  the  copy,  that  can  be  spared.  For  even  a  small 
reality  is  far  more  significant  than  a  big  sham.  The 
infinite  variety  and  complexity  of  nature  insures  a  field 
for  a  man’s  unique  individuality.  According  to  the  evolu¬ 
tion  point  of  view,  all  progress  ultimately  depends  on 
“favorable  variations.”  In  human  progress,  therefore, 
the  individuality  of  each  man,  we  may  believe,  constitutes 
each  man  such  a  possible  “favorable  variation”;  for  he 
has  his  own  unique  self  to  give,  and  so  can  render  to  so¬ 
ciety  and  the  race  a  service  no  one  else  can  replace.  The 
community,  too,  if  it  is  to  be  at  its  best,  needs  this  free 
initiative  on  the  part  of  each  individuality.  Nothing  is 
so  essential  to  human  progress.  This  becomes,  indeed, 


86 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

the  surest  test  for  the  kind  of  state  or  community  action 
which,  in  any  given  case,  may  be  wisely  employed.  The 
principle,  that  is,  justifies,  not  every  kind  of  state  action, 
but  only  that  kind  of  state  or  community  action  which 
tends  to  promote  the  initiative  of  the  individual  and  helps 
him  make  his  full  contribution.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
counts  indubitably  unjustified  every  form  of  state  or 
community  action  which  hinders  individual  initiative  and 
contribution.12 

The  greatest  discovery,  therefore,  that  a  man  ever 
makes,  next  to  his  discovery  of  God — and  the  two  are 
probably  essentially  synchronous — is  the  discovery  of 
himself ,  finding  himself,  finding  that  particular  unique¬ 
ness  which  is  manifested  and  reflected  in  his  entire  per¬ 
sonality;  finding  his  own  particular  mission  and  message 
— his  calling  both  to  life  and  to  work.  Emerson’s  warn¬ 
ing  against  throwing  away  one’s  own  honest  individuality 
is  always  needed:  “Set  ten  men  to  write  their  journal  for 
one  day,  and  nine  of  them  will  leave  out  their  thought  or 
proper  result — that  is  their  net  experience — and  lose 
themselves  in  misreporting  the  supposed  experience  of 
other  people.”  But  their  “net  experience”  is  precisely  the 
one  great  gift  which  they  have  to  make  to  men.  This 
requires  absolute  inner  honesty — the  honesty,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  of  a  true  witness  to  the  great  values  of  life. 

Once  more,  self-respect  is  necessary  for  one's  own  hap¬ 
piness.  One  needs  supremely  the  joy  of  knowing  that  he 
has  a  part,  a  real,  a  significant,  an  unique  part,  a  son’s 
part,  to  play  in  life,  a  part  which  if  he  does  not  play 
simply  will  not  be  played.  For  this  fidelity  to  his  own  in¬ 
dividuality,  as  we  have  seen,  constitutes  both  his  own 
largest  attainment  in  character  and  his  highest  service 

“Cf.  King,  The  Moral  and  Religious  Challenge  of  Our  Times ,  pp. 
75-76. 


The  Personal  and  Ethical  Approach  87 

to  others,  and  hence  naturally  becomes  as  well  the  source 
of  his  highest  joy.  In  The  Boy  and  the  Angel ,  Browning 
tells  the  story  of  the  great  Archangel  coming  down  to 
sing  God’s  praise  in  the  place  of  a  little  boy,  and  the 
poet  represents  God  as  saying,  “I  miss  my  little  human 
praise.”  Not  even  the  great  organ  note  of  the  Archangel 
could  replace  in  the  ear  of  God  the  little  treble  of  the  boy. 

From  this  point  of  view,  therefore,  each  one  of  us  may 
have  the  assurance  and  joy  of  knowing  that  he  has  his 
own  absolutely  unique  individuality,  his  own  note,  his  own 
flavor,  his  own  vision,  his  own  message.  This  is  hardly 
more  than  the  expression  of  the  plain  fact  of  the  untold 
complexity  of  the  being  of  man  revealed  in  evolution  and 
in  modern  psychology.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  with 
Hoff  ding  13  that  individuality  is  the  ultimate  miracle  of 
history, — an  individuality  of  the  entire  personality,  of 
which  the  individuality  of  face  and  the  individuality  of 
voice  are  only  quite  inadequate  illustrations.  How  marvel¬ 
ous  is  this  fact  of  individuality,  like  the  unexplained  for¬ 
tuitous  but  essential  variations  of  evolution !  The  uniquely 
individual  person !  Only  this  could  be  truly  and  in  the  high¬ 
est  sense  a  child  of  God,  worthy  to  be  the  goal  of  age-long 
evolution ;  and  only  the  deep  spirit  of  reverence  is  sufficient 
to  express  what  we  need  to  recognize  in  such  a  personality. 
The  complete  realization  of  his  individual  self — this  it  is 
which  constitutes  a  man’s  high  calling  in  morals  and  in 
religion,  in  character,  in  influence,  in  happiness.  In  a 
deeper  and  more  all-inclusive  sense  probably  than  Shake¬ 
speare  himself  saw,  is  it  true, 

This  above  all;  to  thine  own  self  be  true: 

And  it  must  follow,  as  the  Night  the  Day, 

Thou  canst  not  then  be  false  to  any  man. 

aCf.  Outlines  of  Psychology,  p.  353. 


88 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

And  we  may  not  leave  this  discussion  of  the  significance 
of  self-respect  without  remembering  that  we  are  under  the 
most  solemn  obligation  to  make  the  full  self-respect  which 
we  claim  for  ourselves  possible  to  others  also. 

But  the  principle  of  reverence  for  personality  involves 
not  only  self-respect  but  respect  for  others,  And  respect 
for  others  always  includes  both  respect  for  their  liberty 
and  respect  for  the  inner  sanctity  of  their  person. 

IV 

First,  then,  it  means  respect  for  the  liberty  of  others; 
for  that  respect  is  necessary  and  basic  for  character,  for 
influence,  and  for  happiness. 

In  the  first  place,  respect  for  the  liberty  of  others  is 
necessary  for  one's  own  character.  One  becomes  a  slave 
who  treats  another  as  a  slave,  as  Fichte  long  ago  pointed 
out.  And  Booker  Washington  was  only  giving  us  a 
modern  version  of  this  same  proverb  when  he  said  that 
you  cannot  hold  another  man  in  the  ditch  without  staying 
in  the  ditch  yourself.  Character  inevitably  deteriorates 
through  the  use  of  arbitrary  power.  And  this  holds  true 
whether  the  arbitrary  power  is  sought  by  one  man  or 
another,  by  labor  or  by  capital,  by  one  nation  or  another, 
by  one  race  or  another.  For  we  all  need,  if  we  are  to 
build  solidly  in  the  matter  of  character,  a  deep  sense  of 
accountability,  and  we  should  consequently  neither  desire 
nor  accept  the  place  of  arbitrary  power.  For  it  makes 
right  moral  conditions  and  fine  personal  relations  impos¬ 
sible,  whatever  else  is  done  or  not  done.  For  arbitrariness 
has  no  rational  place  for  true  freedom  on  the  part  of  any 
man.  Even  the  “ benevolent  tyrant”  necessarily  defeats 
his  own  aim,  in  whatever  field  he  works.  So  long  as  he 
takes  the  tyrant’s  attitude  he  can  only  give  things  and 


The  Personal  and  Ethical  Approach  89 

physical  conditions ;  he  cannot  give  fine  personal  condi¬ 
tions.  So  long,  then,  as  he  keeps  his  arbitrariness  he  can¬ 
not  give  the  highest  conditions  of  happiness;  for  these 
conditions  are  inner,  not  outer,  and  involve,  at  the  very 
least,  respect  for  the  liberty  of  the  other  man.  And  that 
means  that  such  continued  disregard  of  inner  conditions, 
of  the  moral  liberty  of  the  other  man,  disintegrates  one’s 
own  character. 

And  respect  for  the  liberty  of  another  is  necessary  also 
for  one’s  own  influence .  The  highest  influence  is  to  win 
another  man  to  his  own  choice  of  character  or  of  the  right 
course  of  action.  But  you  cannot  win  another  to  char¬ 
acter  without  enlisting  his  will,  not  breaking  it.  Respect 
for  his  liberty  is  here,  therefore,  plainly  basic  to  your  own 
influence.  It  is  possible  to  tie  a  boy  disastrously  to  his 
mother’s  apron  strings,  as  the  phrase  goes.  For  the  boy 
must  have  some  opportunity  for  using  his  will  if  he  is  to 
learn  to  use  it  wisely.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
every  human  being,  including  the  child,  has  an  inalienable 
right  to  make  his  own  blunders.  It  is  far  better  that 
one’s  daughter  should  occasionally  wear  a  ribbon  that 
does  not  harmonize  with  the  rest  of  her  apparel,  rather 
than  that  she  should  never  have  the  opportunity  to  use  her 
own  judgment  at  all.  There  are  weak-willed  children 
often,  not  because  their  inheritance  is  not  good,  but  simply 
because  they  have  not  had  a  chance  to  use  their  own  wills. 
Military  obedience  by  children  cannot,  then,  be  the  aim 
on  the  part  of  either  parents  or  teachers.  It  is  no  sim¬ 
ple  victory  in  the  “conflict  of  wills”  which  the  righteous 
parent  or  teacher  seeks.  No  real  obedience  or  true  char¬ 
acter  can  be  so  obtained.  And  that  means  that  the  man 
is  himself  exerting  no  true  influence.  For  true  influence 
involves  enlisting  the  will,  calling  it  out,  training  it  in  the 
direction  of  its  own  best,  and  all  this  is  an  unobtrusive  way 


90 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

that  sacredly  respects  the  liberty  of  the  child  and  increas¬ 
ingly  throws  decisions  upon  the  child  as  he  grows.  Fair- 
bairn  has  put  in  classic  form  the  growth  of  unobtrusive¬ 
ness  in  the  relations  of  a  true  father  to  his  growing  son. 
For  the  true  father  knows  that  influence  is  not  dom¬ 
ination.  For  “in  whatever  form,”  as  Fairbairn  says,  “the 
sovereignty  of  a  father  who  has  been  a  father  indeed,  is 
of  all  human  authorities  the  most  real  and  the  most  en¬ 
during.”  14 

Respect  for  the  liberty  of  the  child,  therefore,  does  not 
necessarily  mean  that  in  the  relation  of  parent  and  child 
there  is  no  place  for  authority,  for  law,  even  for  physical 
punishment,  for  some  form  of  what  may  be  called  “police 
action.”  There  is  such  a  place,  as  McDougall  says :  “It 
is  generally  necessary  that  law  shall  be  enforced  at  first 
by  physical  strength,  and  that  his  (the  child’s)  regard  for 
it  shall  be  encouraged  by  physical  punishment ;  for  the 
first  step  towards  moral  conduct  is  the  control  of  the  im¬ 
mediate  impulse,  and  fear  of  punishment  can  secure  this 
control  of  the  immediate  impulse.”  15  But  we  are  not  to 
mistake  the  result  of  all  this  for  real  moral  character.  It 
is  at  the  most  only  a  bare  beginning  in  true  moral  devel¬ 
opment. 

Perhaps  no  one  has  put  more  significantly  or  sugges¬ 
tively  the  central  aim  and  means  in  this  whole  relation  of 
parent  and  child  than  Patterson  Du  Bois  in  his  definition 
of  the  true  father ,  when  he  insists  that  the  true  father  does 
not  say,  “I  will  conquer  that  child,  no  matter  what  it  may 
cost  him,”  but,  “I  will  help  that  child  to  conquer  himself, 
no  matter  what  it  may  cost  me.  .  .  .  Parent  and  child 
are  to  meet  in  a  joint  effort  on  the  part  of  both  to  do 
God’s  right,  and  not  on  the  part  of  either  for  mere  supe- 

uThe  Place  of  Christ  in  Modem  Theology ,  pp.  434435. 

“Op.  cit.,  p.  187. 


The  Personal  and  Ethical  Approach  91 

riority  or  mastery.  The  only  principle  that  works  under 
all  conditions  is,  not  the  principle  of  arbitrary  parental 
mastery,  but  of  parental  aid  and  service.  This  is  our 
Father’s  way  of  dealing  with  his  children.  He  threatens 
no  compulsion,  but  throws  the  responsibility  on  them  by 
giving  them  a  right  of  choice.”  Let  it  be  clear  that  this 
is  no  cheap  and  easy  and  sentimental  way ;  it  rather  alone 
faces  ail  the  facts.  It  respects  the  child’s  liberty  and 
seeks  his  real  character.  And  it  exerts  the  highest  in¬ 
fluence  because  it  is  reverent  of  the  liberty  of  the  child, 
and  is  no  domination. 

We  have  discussed  this  principle,  of  the  necessary 
respect  for  the  liberty  of  others,  chiefly  as  illustrated  in 
the  relation  of  parent  and  child,  but  the  principle  holds, 
it  should  be  remembered,  in  all  personal  relations ,  and 
even  more  when  we  seek  influence  over  adults.  For  to 
fail  sacredly  and  persistently  to  respect  the  liberty  of 
others  in  any  of  the  associations  of  life,  to  fail  to  give 
them  full  room  for  the  exercise  of  their  moral  freedom,  is 
ultimately  to  abjure  moral  means  altogether  and  to  fall 
back  directly  upon  force.  No  association  or  situation 
between  individuals  or  groups  or  classes  or  nations  or 
races  can  be  finally  satisfactory  into  which  men  do  not 
come  freely  with  self-respect  and  with  respect  for  the  free¬ 
dom  of  others ;  in  which  rational  sympathetic  persuasion 
and  unconscious  contagion  of  character  have  not  prac¬ 
tically  replaced  force  of  all  kinds. 

Naturally  masterful  personalities  have  need  to  be  pecu¬ 
liarly  on  their  guard  at  this  point  in  their  relation  to 
others ;  for  in  spite  of  themselves  and  even  in  spite  of  their 
own  principles  and  desires,  they  are  likely  by  sheer  force 
and  weight  of  personality  to  determine  what  the  relation 
to  others  is  to  be,  to  dominate  the  situation,  and  to  sub¬ 
stitute  this  forceful  domination  for  genuine  influence. 


92 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

With  full  honesty  of  intention  they  have  still  become  quite 
unconsciously  benevolent  tyrants. 

We  need  to  consider  here,  too,  the  two  great  tempera¬ 
mental  types  into  which  humanity  divides,  and  see  their 
respective  dangers :  the  stable  type  and  the  unstable 
type.16  The  danger  of  the  stable  type  is  that  of  simple 
domination,  without  regard  to  the  particular  situation  and 
without  any  real  insight  into  it,  in  the  place  of  genuine  in¬ 
fluence.  And  this  hinders  progress,  because  it  tends  to 
prevent  new  suggestions  from  arising.  The  danger  of  the 
unstable  type,  on  the  other  hand,  is  that  it  shall  have  no 
influence  because  it  is  too  changeable.  It  has  no  con¬ 
sistent  leadership  that  can  be  followed,  and  so  in  its 
turn  hinders  progress  too.  The  contrast  is  very  like  that 
of  which  James  speaks  17  when  he  says:  “Life  is  one  long 
struggle  between  conclusions  based  on  abstract  ways  of 
conceiving  cases,  and  opposite  conclusions  prompted  by 
our  instinctive  perception  of  them  as  individual  facts. 
.  .  .  Sometimes  the  abstract  conceiver’s  way  is  better, 
sometimes  that  of  the  man  of  instinct.” 

Respect  for  the  liberty  of  the  other  is  also  necessary 
both  for  your  own  and  for  the  other’s  happiness. 

It  is  necessary,  in  the  first  place,  for  your  own  happi¬ 
ness;  for  respect  for  the  liberty  of  others  evidently  avoids 
the  friction  of  forced  situations,  and  gives  positively  finer 
personal  relations,  and  so  truly  helps  to  your  own 
happiness.  The  simple  fact,  too,  that  the  situation 
is  what  it  ought  to  be  gives  to  the  man  who  wants  the 
best  a  sincere  pleasure.  No  personal  relations  can  bring 
their  best,  in  joy  and  enrichment  of  life,  that  do  not  fulfil 
these  ethical  conditions. 

Respect  for  the  liberty  of  others  is  not  less  necessary 

18  Cf.  Outline  of  Science,  Vol.  II,  pp.  553-4. 

”  Psychology,  Vol.  II,  p.  674. 


The  Personal  and  Ethical  Approach  93 

for  their  happiness .  For  to  make  another  fully  happy 
it  is  necessary  that  he  should  have  some  sphere  of  action 
of  his  own,  some  chance  for  choice  and  decision — some 
range,  however  small,  for  accomplishment  that  is  genuinely 
his  own,  of  which  he  can  say,  “That,  under  God,  is  my 
work.”  Of  that  room  for  liberty  you  have  no  right  to 
deprive  him,  and  you  cannot  make  him  happy  without  it. 
The  head  of  any  enterprise  with  a  large  staff,  particularly 
if  he  is  himself  naturally  a  masterful  personality,  is  in 
danger  unconsciously  of  practically  coming  in  and  taking 
on,  from  time  to  time,  the  work  of  another ;  and  that  is  a 
very  serious  breach  of  the  fundamental  rights  of  the  sub¬ 
ordinate. 

This  centrally  important  condition  of  happiness 
through  sacred  respect  for  the  liberty  of  others  is  often 
overlooked.  No  possible  combination  of  things  and  ar¬ 
rangements  and  physical  advantages  can  take  the  place 
of  this  respect  for  another’s  liberty.  With  reference  to 
all  such  mechanical  adjustments,  employees,  for  example, 
are  pretty  certain  to  feel,  if  not  to  say,  “I  can  get  on 
without  these  things,  or  provide  them  for  myself,  but  what 
I  want  is  not  these  things,  not  these  convenient  arrange¬ 
ments,  but  recognition  as  a  personal  willing  factor  in  the 
whole  enterprise,  freely  contributing  my  own  best  to  the 
result  and  so  in  some  real  sense  a  personal  partner  whose 
will  is  respected.”  There  are,  therefore,  few  executive 
principles  better  worth  faithfully  following  than  to  find 
the  best  human  beings  one  can,  and  then  to  give  them 
room.  For  that  will  mean,  in  the  first  place,  deepened 
self-respect  on  the  part  of  the  employees,  and  an  added 
sense  of  the  value  of  their  work.  Both  these  factors  will 
carry  with  them  a  distinctly  greater  happiness  in  the 
work  undertaken,  and  consequently  tend  to  increase  the 
quantity  of  the  work  done,  and  improve  its  quality. 


94$ 


Seeing  Life  Whole 


y 

But  respect  for  the  personality  of  others  involves  not 
only  respect  for  the  liberty  of  others,  but  a  sacred  rev¬ 
erence  for  the  sanctity  of  the  other's  inner  personality. 

And  that  sacred  reverence  for  the  sanctity  of  the  other’s 
inner  personality  is  necessary  and  basic,  first  of  all,  for 
one's  own  character.  One  falls  inevitably  below  his  own 
best,  even  in  the  closest  relations,  or  with  his  youngest 
child  or  his  least  mature  pupil,  or  in  the  difficult  rela¬ 
tions  of  groups  and  classes,  when  he  forgets  that  in  the 
case  of  every  person  there  is  an  inner  sanctuary  into 
which  he  may  come  only  by  the  other’s  permission.  There  is 
a  certain  solitariness  of  the  human  soul ,  which  is  scarcely 
ever  fully  recognized.  What  an  infinitesimal  fraction 
of  one’s  whole  experience  is  ever  known  even  by  those  with 
whom  one  is  most  intimately  acquainted !  How  little 
either  of  the  best  or  of  the  worst  in  us  is  or  can  be  revealed 
to  another!  It  is  not  strange,  when  this  sense  of  soli¬ 
tariness  and  of  the  impossibility  of  being  fully  under¬ 
stood  by  another  sweeps  over  us,  that  we  are  driven  back 
to  God.  We  learn  to  be  deeply  grateful  for  a  sense  of 
the  presence  and  knowledge  of  God,  such  as  awed  and 
almost  terrified  us  in  our  earlier  years,  and  we  say  now 
with  the  ancient  Psalmist,  and  with  a  new  note  of  profound 
thankfulness : 

O  Jehovah,  thou  hast  searched  me,  and  known  me. 

Thou  knowest  my  downsitting  and  mine  uprising; 

Thou  understandest  my  thought  afar  off. 

Thou  searchest  out  my  path  and  my  lying  down, 

And  art  acquainted  with  all  my  ways. 

For  there  is  not  a  word  in  my  tongue, 

But,  lo,  O  Jehovah,  thou  knowest  it  altogether. 

Thou  hast  beset  me  behind  and  before, 

And  laid  thy  hand  upon  me. 


The  Personal  and  Ethical  Approach  95 

Such  knowledge  is  too  wonderful  for  me; 

It  is  high,  I  cannot  attain  unto  it. 

Whither  shall  I  go  from  thy  Spirit? 

Or  whither  shall  I  flee  from  thy  presence  ? 18 

One  can  hardly  take  in  this  large  measure  of  the  solitari¬ 
ness  of  the  human  soul  even  at  the  best,  and  fail  to  get  at 
the  same  time  some  feeling  of  the  “Holy  of  Holies”  in 
the  personality  of  another.  For  the  one  holy  thing  that 
the  universe  contains  is  a  person,  and  when  one  sees  this 
sacred  significance  of  the  person  he  instinctively  knows 
that  in  the  presence  of  this  “Holy  of  Holies”  he  needs  to 
take  off  his  shoes  and  to  uncover  his  head. 

At  the  same  time,  we  may  be  grateful  that  “this  myster¬ 
ious  isolation  of  self  from  self 9  is  not  quite  so  absolute  as 
we  are  likely  to  take  it,  and  that  there  is  a  very  real  and 
significant  way,  which  Hocking  has  pointed  out,  in  which 
we  may  deeply  share  in  each  other’s  lives : 

“I  have  sometimes  sat  looking  at  a  comrade,  speculating  on 
this  mysterious  isolation  of  self  from  self.  Why  are  we  so 
made  that  I  gaze  and  see  of  thee  only  thy  Wall,  and  never 
Thee?  This  Wall  of  thee  is  but  a  movable  part  of  the  Wall 
of  my  world;  and  I  also  am  a  Wall  to  thee:  we  look  out  at 
one  another  from  behind  masks.  How  would  it  seem  if  my 
mind  could  but  once  be  within  thine;  and  we  could  meet  and 
without  barrier  be  with  each  other?  And  then  it  has  fallen 
upon  me  like  a  shock — as  when  one  thinking  himself  alone 
has  felt  a  presence —  But  I  am  in  thy  soul.  These  things 
around  me  are  in  thy  experience.  They  are  thy  own;  when  I 
touch  them  and  move  them  I  change  thee.  When  I  look  on 
them  I  see  what  thou  seest;  when  I  listen,  I  hear  what  thou 
hearest.  I  am  in  the  great  Room  of  thy  soul ;  and  I  experience 
thy  very  experience.  For  where  art  thou ?  Not  there,  behind 
those  eyes,  within  that  head,  in  darkness,  fraternizing  with 
chemical  processes.  Of  these,  in  my  own  case,  I  know  noth- 


“Psalm  139:1-7. 


96 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

ing,  and  will  know  nothing;  for  my  existence  is  spent  not 
behind  my  Wall,  but  in  front  of  it.  I  am  there,  where  I 
have  treasures.  And  there  art  thou,  also.  This  world  in 
which  I  live,  is  the  world  of  thy  soul:  and  being  within 
that,  I  am  within  thee.  I  can  imagine  no  contact  more  real 
and  thrilling  than  this;  that  we  should  meet  and  share  iden¬ 
tity,  not  through  ineffable  inner  depths  (alone),  but  here 
through  the  foregrounds  of  common  experience;  and  that 
thou  shouldst  be — not  behind  that  mask — but  here ,  pressing 
with  all  thy  consciousness  upon  me,  containing  me,  and  these 
things  of  mine.”  19 

This  conception  of  a  great  common  fellowship  with 
others  in  our  experience  of  a  common  world  enlarges  and 
enriches  our  whole  thought  of  the  personal  relations  in 
which  we  stand. 

And  respect  for  the  sanctity  of  the  inner  person  of 
another  is  necessary  to  our  own  character  also,  because  we 
are  in  danger  of  measuring  too  often  the  intimacy  of  our 
friendships  by  the  number  of  privacies  which  we  feel  at 
liberty  to  ride  over  roughshod.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
reminds  us  that  it  is  those  who,  because  of  long  acquaint¬ 
ance,  have  the  key  to  the  side  door  of  our  hearts,  who  are 
most  likely  to  invade  the  sanctities  of  our  being.  “Be  very 
careful  to  whom  you  trust  one  of  these  keys  of  the  side 
door,”  he  says.  “The  fact  of  possessing  one  renders 
those  even  who  are  dear  to  you  very  terrible  at  times. 
.  .  .  Some  of  them  have  a  scale  of  your  whole  nervous 
system,  and  can  play  all  the  gamut  of  your  sensibilities  in 
semitones, — touching  the  naked  nerve-pulps  as  a  pianist 
strikes  his  instrument.  ...  No  stranger  can  get  a  great 
many  notes  of  torture  out  of  a  human  soul;  it  takes 
one  that  knows  it  well.”  20  Confucius  is  reported  as  say- 

lfr  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,  pp.  265-6. 

80  Quoted  by  H.  Clay  Trumbull  in  Friendship  the  Master  Passion, 
p.  91. 


The  Personal  and  Ethical  Approach  97 

in g  of  another,  that  he  “knows  the  art  of  associating  with 
his  friends :  however  old  the  acquaintance  may  be,  he 
always  treats  them  with  the  same  respect.”  21  And  it 
should  be  remembered  that  we  are  in  peculiar  danger 
of  overriding  the  finer  spirits.  The  ruder  and  the  brusker 
may  be  able  to  defend  themselves,  but  those  of  finer  mold 
are  more  easily  crushed.  It  was  a  new  sense  of  the  sacred¬ 
ness  of  intimate  relations  which  a  young  man  of  my  ac¬ 
quaintance  got  when,  as  a  boy,  he  heard  an  older  man 
in  a  chance  remark  say  to  another:  “I  never  go  into  my 
wife’s  room  without  knocking.”  It  was  not  that  this  need 
necessarily  be  an  absolute  rule,  but  the  remark  suggested 
to  the  boy  what  had  not  before  dawned  on  him — the  pos¬ 
sibility  of  a  sacred  reverence  for  another,  in  even  the  most 
intimate  conceivable  relations. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  worst  and  most  damning  of  all 
sins  is  the  spirit  of  contempt  for  the  person  of  another. 
Bishop  Brent  gives  an  illustration  of  this  attitude:  “The 
mistress  of  a  household  on  coming  downstairs  one  morn¬ 
ing  was  greeted  by  her  maid,  who  was  dusting  in  the  hall, 

with  a  ‘Good  morning,’  and,  ‘Do  you  know,  Mrs.  Z - , 

that  I  have  been  with  you  five  years  today?’  ‘Have  you?’ 
was  the  response.  ‘You  have  left  some  dust  on  that  chair.’ 
The  mistress  boasted  doubtless  that  she  had  ‘reminded 
her  servant  of  her  place.’  No  further  comment  is  needed. 
The  maid  thought  herself  to  be  a  person,  but  was  reminded 
that  she  was  a  thing” — 22  an  animated  dustrag.  Such 
contempt  for  the  inner  life  of  another  suggests  how 
deeply  one’s  own  character  may  suffer  by  willingness  to 
use  another  merely  as  a  convenience. 

Fine  high-minded  personal  relations  do  not  come  by 
accident.  The  door,  we  do  well  to  remember,  in  all  such 

a  Sayings  of  Confucius,  p.  74. 

83  With  Qod  in  the  World,  p.  65. 


98 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

relations,  is  always  opened  from  within.  One  stands  with¬ 
out  and  knocks.  He  may  not  force  the  door.  So  God  him¬ 
self  reveres  our  human  personalities.  For  even  the  Christ 
is  represented  as  standing  at  the  door  of  the  human  heart 
and  knocking,  that  he  may  enter.  “Behold,”  saith  he, 
“I  stand  at  the  door  and  knock :  if  any  man  hear  my 
voice  and  open  the  door,  I  will  come  in  to  him,  and  will  sup 
with  him,  and  he  with  me.”  23  But  he  must  open  the  door. 
Even  the  Christ  stands  without  and  knocks. 

One  cannot  fail,  then,  in  this  finer  observance  of  rever¬ 
ence  for  others,  and  not  fail  in  his  own  highest  char¬ 
acter. 

And  this  reverence  for  the  sanctity  of  the  inner  person¬ 
ality  of  others  is  necessary  also  for  one's  own  influence. 

If  one  is  to  influence  others  toward  the  highest  in  char¬ 
acter,  one  must  himself  show  this  highest.  We  cannot 
much  help  to  bring  our  children,  our  pupils,  our  friends 
to  a  fine  sense  of  the  reverence  due  to  the  inner  sanctity  of 
the  person  of  another — the  finest  flower  of  character — 
without  revealing  a  like  reverence  ourselves.  Our  example 
goes  farther  than  our  words.  Nowhere  more  than  here  is 
it  emphatically  true  that  “what  you  are  speaks  so  loudly 
I  cannot  hear  what  you  say.”  We  can  hardly  be  too  sen¬ 
sitive  to  what  is  due  to  another  person  at  just  this  point. 
I  once  sat  at  a  table  with  a  university  president  who  pro¬ 
ceeded,  in  my  presence,  to  take  pretty  severely  to  task  his 
two  grown  children,  who  sat  at  table  with  us.  He  seemed 
quite  oblivious  to  the  fact  that  he  was  inevitably  seriously 
breaking  down  their  own  self-respect.  What  he  had  to 
say  to  them  ought  never  to  have  been  said  in  the  presence 
of  a  third  person,  and  especially  in  the  presence  of  one  who 
was  a  stranger  to  them.  One  of  my  pupils  in  psychol- 
ogy,  years  ago,  in  reporting  on  some  childhood  experi- 
28  Revelation,  3:20. 


99 


The  Personal  and  Ethical  Approach 

ences,  said  that  she  had  never  been  able  to  get  over  the  half 
sense  of  outrage  which  she  had  as  a  very  little  girl,  when 
her  mother  took  the  key  to  a  doll’s  chest  of  drawers  which 
had  been  given  to  her,  and  proceeded  to  go  through  the 
drawers  without  her  permission.  There  was  nothing  in 
the  drawers  that  her  mother  might  not  well  enough  have 
seen,  but  the  daughter  felt,  young  as  she  was,  that  the 

chest  of  drawers  had  been  given  to  her,  and  that  her 

mother  ought  to  have  asked  her  permission  before  she  went 
through  them.  And  it  is  difficult  not  to  believe  that  the 
daughter’s  instinct  in  this  was  right  and  the  mother’s 
wrong. 

And  we  need  especially,  in  considering  this  principle 
of  reverence  for  the  inner  sanctity  of  the  person,  to 

bear  clearly  in  mind  that  influence  is  one  thing ,  and 

domination  quite  another.  The  stronger  a  man’s  per¬ 
sonality,  the  more  he  ought  to  take  this  distinction  to 
heart.  One  of  my  acquaintances,  years  ago,  said  to 
me  concerning  a  student,  “He  is  one  of  your  disciples.” 
I  do  not  remember  what  I  said ;  it  is  not  important ;  but  if 
I  had  expressed  my  full  mind,  in  answer  to  the  remark 
made,  I  should  have  said  something  like  this :  “I  want  you 
to  understand  that,  in  the  sense  in  which  you  use  the  word 
‘disciple,’  I  have  no  disciples  and  wish  to  have  none.  I 
want  no  pupil  of  mine,  if  he  looks  back  to  his  association 
with  me,  to  have  to  say,  ‘That  man  took  advantage  of  my 
youth  and  ignorance  and  inexperience  to  stamp  himself 
upon  me,’  instead  of  being  able  to  say,  ‘He  helped  me  to  be 
true  to  my  own  absolute  best.’  ”  The  last  is  influence, 
which  any  man  may  eagerly  covet ;  the  other  attitude  is 
domination,  which  no  man  should  be  willing  to  exercise. 
And  this  principle,  too,  it  should  be  remembered,  holds  for 
groups,  for  classes,  and  for  nations  and  races  as  well  as 
for  individuals.  Nothing  is  more  needed  in  the  very 


100 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

difficult  Negro  question  here  in  America  than  this  deeper 
reverence  for  personality,  on  every  side.24 

And  once  more,  reverence  for  the  sanctity  of  the  inner 
personality  of  another  is  necessary  for  the  happiness  both 
of  yourself  and  of  the  other . 

It  is  necessary,  first  of  all,  for  your  own  happiness . 
For  without  such  reverence  you  cannot  know  the  finest, 
most  beautiful,  and  most  rewarding  personal  relations, 
which  alone  can  constitute  happiness  of  the  highest  order. 

And  such  reverence  is  needed  not  less  for  the  happiness 
of  others.  For  without  such  reverence  you  keep  others 
from  finding  rewarding  relations  with  yourself  and  with 
others  as  well,  so  far  as  they  are  affected  by  you.  Some 
very  honest  attempts  to  increase  the  happiness  of  others 
thus  fail  egregiously,  just  because  of  that  “certain  blind¬ 
ness  in  human  beings,55  of  which  James  wrote,  “the  blind¬ 
ness  with  which  we  all  are  afflicted  in  regard  to  the 
feelings  of  creatures  and  people  different  from  ourselves.55 
And  he  draws  this  counsel  from  his  study — a  counsel,  it 
will  be  noted,  to  be  deeply  considerate  of  the  personality 
of  others : 

“And  now  what  is  the  result  of  all  these  considerations 
and  quotations?  It  is  negative  in  one  sense,  but  positive  in 
another.  It  absolutely  forbids  us  to  be  forward  in  pro¬ 
nouncing  on  the  meaninglessness  of  forms  of  existence  other 
than  our  own;  and  it  commands  us  to  tolerate,  respect,  and 
indulge  those  whom  we  see  harmlessly  interested  and  happy 
in  their  own  ways,  however  unintelligible  these  may  be  to  us. 
Hands  off :  neither  the  whole  of  truth  nor  the  whole  of  good 
is  revealed  to  any  single  observer,  although  each  observer 
gains  a  partial  superiority  of  insight  from  the  peculiar  position 
in  which  he  stands.  Even  prisons  and  sick-rooms  have  their 
special  revelations.  It  is  enough  to  ask  of  each  of  us  that 

81  See  King,  The  Moral  and  Religious  Challenge  of  Our  Times, 
Chap.  VIII. 


The  Personal  and  Ethical  Approach  101 

he  should  be  faithful  to  his  own  opportunities  and  make  the 
most  of  his  own  blessings,  without  presuming  to  regulate  the 
rest  of  the  vast  field.”  25 

There  are  many  mechanically  smooth-running  house¬ 
holds,  it  is  to  be  feared,  that  are  so  because  the  rest  of  the 
family  have  finally  yielded  to  a  domestic  tyrant,  who 
knows  what  the  others  need,  and  who  is  inclined  to  think, 
if  not  to  say,  that  if  they  are  to  be  happy  at  all  they  must 
be  happy  in  the  tyrant’s  way.  There  are  many  such 
benevolent  tyrants,  who  have  a  plan  for  the  lives  of  all 
others  with  whom  they  come  in  contact,  and  who  insist 
on  making  others  happy  in  their  own  fashion,  but  who 
have  never  made  the  really  great  sacrifice  of  giving  up 
their  own  way.  One  sometimes  feels  that  he  would  like  to 
write  on  the  fibres  of  the  heart  of  some  of  these  benevolent 
tyrants  (although  that  would  probably  not  be  respectful 
of  their  personality)  Charlotte  Yonge’s  deep-going 
aphorism:  “It  is  a  great  thing  to  sacrifice;  but  it  is  a 
greater  to  consent  not  to  sacrifice  in  one’s  own  way.” 

This  principle  of  reverence  for  personality  is  the  high¬ 
est  test  and  standard  for  all  friendships.  And  it  is  some 
such  test  of  high  friendship  as  this  which  Emerson  had  in 
mind,  in  one  of  the  best  things  that  he  ever  said  about 
friends :  “Our  chief  want  in  life  is  somebody  who  shall 
make  us  do  what  we  can.  This  is  the  service  of  a  friend. 
With  him  we  are  easily  great.  There  is  a  sublime  attrac¬ 
tion  in  him  to  whatever  virtue  is  in  us.  How  he  flings  wide 
the  doors  of  existence.”  26  There  is  a  beautiful  story  of 
Baron  Bunsen,  that,  as  he  lay  dying  and  looked  up  into  the 
face  of  his  wife  as  she  bowed  over  him,  he  said  to  her,  “In 
thy  face  I  have  seen  the  face  of  the  Eternal.”  There  is 

25  Talks  to  Teachers  on  Psychology  and  to  Students  on  Some  of 
Life’s  Ideals,  pp.  263-4. 

20  Considerations  by  the  Way. 


102 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

suggeistiGii  here  of  the  finest  personal  relations,  of  what 
our  friends  at  their  best  may  be  to  us — media  for  the  reve¬ 
lation  even  of  the  divine ;  so  that  we  could  honestly  say  to 
a  true  friend,  “Since  I  knew  you  it  has  been  easier  to 
believe  in  truth  and  honor  and  purity ;  it  has  been  easier 
to  believe  in  the  world  of  the  spirit;  in  thy  face  I  have 
caught  glimpses  at  least  of  the  Eternal.” 

But  in  Christ  alone  shall  we  find  the  most  perfect 
example  of  this  deep  sense  of  reverence  for  personality. 
As  I  have  elsewhere  said,27  the  incident,  in  John’s  Gospel, 
of  the  woman  taken  in  adultery,  in  which  it  is  said  of 
Jesus,  that  he  “stooped  down  and  with  his  finger  wrote  on 
the  ground,”  illustrates,  in  a  single  case,  the  response  of 
Jesus  to  this  basic  and  eternal  principle  of  reverence  for 
the  person.  For  it  is  hardly  possible  to  misinterpret  this 
action  of  Jesus,  as  he  thus  stoops  down  and  writes  upon 
the  ground.  Any  one  who  has  ever  felt  the  intolerable 
sense  of  shame  that  arises  when  he  has  been  made  an 
unwilling  spectator  of  the  needless  public  humiliation  and 
breaking  down  of  the  self-respect  of  a  servant,  a  child,  a 
wife,  or  a  fellow  man,  will  know  what  the  feeling  of  Jesus 
must  have  been.  He  would  not  share,  though  unwillingly, 
in  the  cruel,  brutal,  needless  humiliation  of  even  a  sinful 
woman  by  adding  to  her  load  of  shame  so  much  as  the 
weight  of  his  pitying  look.  She  is  no  thing  that  she 
should  be  thus  bandied  about  of  men,  but  a  person,  herself 
made  in  the  image  of  the  Eternal  God.  He  could  not  bear 
that  the  sanctities  of  her  inner  person  should  be  thus 
brutally  laid  open  to  the  brazen  gaze  of  men,  though  she 
be  an  open  sinner.  And  the  conduct  here  ascribed  to 
Jesus  in  this  interpolated  incident  in  the  Gospel  of  John 
— the  present  position  of  which  no  critic  defends,  but  the 
inimitable  truth  of  which  none  denies — is  characteristic 

”  The  Moral  and  Religions  Challenge  of  Our  Times,  pp.  3-5. 


The  Personal  and  Ethical  Approach  103 

of  his  attitude  throughout  his  ministry.  Jesus  seems 
constantly  to  be  standing,  with  a  kind  of  moral  shudder, 
between  the  spirit  of  contempt  in  the  Pharisees  and 
Sadducees,  and  the  outraged  personality  of  the  common 
people,  even  of  the  publicans  and  sinners ;  he  feels  the 
contempt,  even  for  these  least,  as  a  blow  in  his  own  face. 

The  principle  of  reverence  for  personality,  then,  we  may 
well  believe,  as  was  suggested  at  the  beginning,  is  a 
supreme  guiding  principle  both  in  ethics  and  in  religion — 
supreme  in  all  the  finer  and  deeper  problems  of  our  living. 
It  is  in  very  truth  a  great  way  to  life,  and  it  has  a  great 
gift  to  make  to  our  own  troublous  times,  and  particularly 
to  a  present-day  Christian  philosophy  of  life. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  APPROACH 

I 

In  turning  to  the  philosophical  approach  to  our  prob¬ 
lem  of  a  Christian  philosophy  of  life,  we  must  recognize 
the  extent  of  the  field,  and  see  that  we  can  only  deal  with 
it  suggestively,  with  the  utmost  brevity.  I  am  to  try  to 
indicate  some  articles  in  my  philosophical  creed,  especially 
as  bearing  upon  religious  thinking  and  living,  and  as  help¬ 
ing  to  that  wholeness  in  the  vision  of  life  which  we  have 
been  making  our  guiding  thought. 

There  is  a  present  tendency  in  some  quarters  to  under¬ 
rate  if  not  to  despise  philosophy  because  of  the  triumphs 
of  empirical  science.  The  philosophers,  to  be  sure,  must 
be  most  willing  to  accept  new  light  from  every  quarter, 
and  be  keen  in  criticism  of  their  own  methods.  But 
Professor  Robinson’s  general  position  in  his  The  Mind  in 
the  Making  seems  to  me  only  weakened  by  his  contemptu¬ 
ous  view  of  philosophy:  “Nowadays  metaphysics  is  re¬ 
vered  by  some  as  our  noblest  effort  to  reach  the  highest 
truth,  and  scorned  by  others  as  the  silliest  of  wild-goose 
chases.  I  am  inclined  to  rate  it,  like  smoking,  as  a  highly 
gratifying  indulgence  to  those  who  like  it,  and,  as  indul¬ 
gences  go,  relatively  innocent.”  1  The  inescapable  and 
deep-going  questions  of  ultimate  reality,  origin  and  des¬ 
tiny,  and  of  meaning  and  value  are  not  so  easily  disposed 

*P.  102. 


104 


The  Philosophical  Approach  105 

of.  The  view  is  redolent  of  the  unscientific  procedure  of 
cutting  short  the  facts  to  suit  one’s  theory.  The  world 
is  less  simple  than  this  denial  of  philosophy  would  suggest. 
We  need  the  best  thinking  of  inquirers  in  all  fields.  For 
while  it  is  clear  that  we  must  use  the  scientific  method  to 
the  farthest  possible  extent,  it  would  still  seem  ill-advised 
and  vain  to  attempt  to  eliminate  all  the  questions  with 
which  men  have  been  engrossed  through  the  centuries 
under  the  name  of  philosophy, — especially  the  deep  reli¬ 
gious  questions. 

For  men  are  driven  by  their  own  natures  from  infancy 
to  try  to  think  the  world  into  unity  in  various  kinds  of 
terms.  Both  the  problems  of  science  and  the  problems  of 
philosophy  are  included  in  this  ideal.  Natural  science  is 
concerned,  as  we  have  seen,  with  the  simplest  of  these 
problems — the  problem  of  trying  to  think  the  world  into 
unity  in  mathematico-mechanical  terms,  and  its  large 
measure  of  success  is  an  encouragement  to  expect  increas¬ 
ing  success  in  the  other  much  more  difficult  problems. 
For,  as  James  says: 

“Though  nature’s  materials  lend  themselves  slowly  and  dis- 
couragingly  to  our  translation  of  them  into  ethical  forms,  but 
more  readily  into  aesthetic  forms;  to  translation  into  scientific 
forms  they  lend  themselves  with  relative  ease  and  complete¬ 
ness.  The  translation,  it  is  true,  will  probably  never  be 
ended.  The  perceptive  order  does  not  give  way,  nor  the 
right  conceptive  substitute  for  it  arise,  at  our  bare  word  of 
command.  It  is  often  a  deadly  fight.  .  .  .  But  victory 

after  victory  makes  us  sure  that  the  essential  doom  of  our 
enemy  is  defeat.”  2 

And  one  of  these  aims,  which  the  mind  sets  itself — the 
scientific  aim — cannot  rationally  scout  the  other  aims — 
esthetic,  ethical  and  religious — equally  well  grounded  in 


9  Psychology,  Vol.  II,  p.  640. 


106 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

human  nature.  Moreover,  the  triumphs  of  science,  as  we 
have  seen,  are  due  to  severe  self-limitation,  to  confining 
itself  to  questions  of  process,  of  mechanical  explanation. 
This  should  not  at  all  imply,  however,  the  unimportance  of 
the  philosophical  questions  of  meaning,  of  ideal  interpre¬ 
tation;  though  the  two  sets  of  questions  should  not  be 
confused. 

In  taking  up,  then,  some  of  these  articles  of  my  philo¬ 
sophical  creed,  I  am  simply  trying  to  share  my  own  best 
vision  at  this  point ;  those  simplifying  and  unifying  lines 
of  thought  that  I  have  myself  found  most  helpful ;  the 
series  of  insights  and  principles  which  have  seemed  most 
illuminating  and  to  which  I  find  myself  returning  again 
and  again ;  such  points  as  one  under  the  experience  of  life 
has  learned  to  sift  out  as  most  significant.  Such  working 
principles  constitute  a  kind  of  practical  confession  of 
philosophical  faith, — the  insights,  convictions,  enthusi¬ 
asms,  indignations,  ideals,  hopes  and  decisions  that  have 
grown  up  out  of  life’s  experience.  Such  an  attempt  must 
be  a  matter  of  faith  on  my  part  that  what  means  much  to 
me  is  likely  to  mean  something,  at  least,  to  others.  And 
what  such  testimony  will  mean  to  another  man  he  himself 
can  hardly  tell  at  the  time.  How  significant  any  particu¬ 
lar  insight  will  prove  only  future  experience  can  show. 

n 

First  of  all,  to  see  the  significance  of  the  whole  philo¬ 
sophical  viewpoint,  it  may  be  worth  while  to  bring 
together  a  number  of  more  or  less  untechnical  definitions 
of  the  sphere  of  philosophy ,  which  may  help  us  to  see  what 
men  have  been  feeling  after  in  this  whole  realm. 

Dante  touches  on  the  spirit  of  philosophy  when  he  says : 
“To  live  lovingly  with  truth  is  philosophy.”  A  spirit  of 


The  Philosophical  Approach  107 

loving  loyalty  to  the  best  one  finds,  and  a  belief  in  the 
unity  of  truth,  are  here  made  the  key  thoughts. 

And  it  may  be  suggested  that  the  spirit  of  Sophocles, 
as  we  saw  that  Matthew  Arnold  characterized  it,  “to  see 
life  steadily  and  to  see  it  whole,”  suggests  another  un- 
technical  definition  of  philosophy;  and  implies  at  least 
two  things :  taking  into  account  all  the  facts,  not  merely 
those  of  process,  and  applying  the  test  of  the  whole 
man. 

Glover  develops  a  similar  thought  of  Plato:  “A  man 
who  is  to  make  anything  of  life,  who  means  to  capture  the 
truth  of  things,  must  be,  so  Plato  tells  us,  the  ‘ spectator 
of  all  time  and  all  existence * — ‘ever  longing  after  the  whole 
of  things  in  its  entirety,  divine  and  human.’  In  a  universe 
which  has  a  real  unity  about  it,  half-views  will  not  do. 
We  have  to  practise  ourselves  to  get  out  of  the  habit  of 
the  half  and  be  resolute  to  live  in  the  whole,  the  good,  the 
beautiful.”  3 

James  gives  his  conception  of  the  relation  of  philosophy 
to  the  special  sciences  when  he  says :  “All  these  special 
sciences,  marked  off  for  convenience  from  the  remaining 
body  of  truth,  must  hold  their  assumptions  and  results 
subject  to  revision  in  the  light  of  each  other’s  needs.  The 
forum  where  they  hold  discussion  is  called  metaphysics. 
Metaphysics  means  only  an  unusually  obstinate  attempt 
to  think  clearly  and  consistently  .  .  .  and  as  soon  as 
one’s  purpose  is  the  attainment  of  the  maximum  possible 
insight  into  the  world  as  a  whole,  the  metaphysical 
puzzles  become  the  most  urgent  ones  of  all.”  4 

To  like  effect  Jevons  says  the  difference  between 
philosophy  and  science  is  this :  “Each  science  deals  with 
one  particular  set  of  facts,  and  no  one  science  deals  with 

*  The  Pilgrim ,  p.  61. 

4  Psychology,  Briefer  Course,  pp.  461-2. 


108 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

all  the  facts  of  experience,  whereas  it  is  with  all  the  facts 
and  with  experience  as  a  whole  that  philosophy  deals ;  for 
the  object  and  purpose  of  philosophy  is  to  inquire,  What 
does  all  our  experience  come  to — what  is  the  meaning  of 
it  all?”6  Eucken’s  point  of  view  is  quite  similar,  and  he 
suggests  that  the  test  of  any  philosophy  must  finally  lie 
in  the  fact  that  it  can  give  'permanent  meaning  and  value 
to  life. 

Kant  attempts  to  cover  the  field  of  philosophy  by  the 
three  questions:  What  can  I  know?  What  ought  I  to 
do?  For  what  may  I  hope?  and  puts  the  questions  of 
religion  under  the  last  head.  And  philosophy  has  inevi¬ 
tably  to  face  the  questions  of  religion  as  a  part  of  the 
whole  question  of  the  meaning  of  the  world,  and  of  the 
possibility  of  its  ideal  interpretation. 

Hoff  ding  says:  “The  innermost  core  of  all  religion  is 
faith  in  the  persistence  of  value  in  the  world.”  Or,  as  he 
elsewhere  calls  it,  “ belief  in  the  conservation  of  value” 
where  he  is  thinking  of  the  analogy  with  the  physical 
principle  of  conservation  of  energy. 

From  the  Christian  point  of  view  Streeter  would  carry 
HofFding’s  conception  farther,  when  he  says:  “Christian¬ 
ity  is  more  than  a  belief  in  the  Conservation  of  Value;  it 
is  above  all  the  belief  in  the  Augmentation  of  Value.  It 
is  a  belief  that  the  whole  creation  will  ultimately  be  re¬ 
deemed,  that  the  Golden  Age  is  to  be  looked  for  not  in  the 
past  but  in  the  future,  and  that  whenever  any  good  thing 
seems  to  perish  there  will  appear  to  take  its  place,  not 
merely  an  equivalent  good  but  some  far  better  thing.”  6 

The  full  scope  of  philosophy  is  indicated  by  its  divi¬ 
sions.  Philosophy  is  commonly  divided  into  metaphysics, 
or  theory  of  being,  the  theory  of  knowledge,  esthetics, 

6 Philosophy:  What  Is  It?  pp.  31-2. 

0  Concerning  Prayer,  p.  6. 


The  Philosophical  Approach  109 

ethics,  and  philosophy  of  religion.  And  metaphysics,  as 
giving  the  theory  of  being,  is  made  to  include  rational 
cosmology,  rational  psychology,  and  rational  theology, 
dealing  with  the  ultimate  questions  which  lie  back  of  the 
being  of  the  world,  of  man,  and  of  God.  Empirical  science 
has  a  direct  and  absolutely  indispensable  contribution  of 
facts  to  make  to  every  one  of  these  divisions  of  philosophy. 
But  after  the  scientific  method  has  done  its  utmost,  there 
will  still  remain  the  questions  of  the  meaning  of  experience 
as  a  whole,  including  the  ultimate  questions  of  origin  and 
destiny. 

From  his  own  point  of  view  Dewey  thus  incidentally 
defines  philosophy:  “Philosophy  starts  from  some  deep 
and  wide  way  of  responding  to  the  difficulties  life  presents, 
but  it  grows  only  when  material  is  at  hand  for  making  this 
practical  response  conscious,  articulate,  and  communi¬ 
cable.”  7  All  that  Dewey  here  suggests  certainly  philos¬ 
ophy  must  include,  and  there  is  undoubted  need  of  Dewey’s 
general  emphatic  insistence  on  the  scientific  factor  in 
philosophy.  The  only  question  to  be  raised  is,  whether 
his  definition  does  not  exclude  much  that  cannot  be  wisely 
ignored,  and  especially  whether  the  place  made  for  religion 
and  particularly  for  the  Christianity  of  Christ  is  not 
singularly  bare  and  inadequate.8 

Now,  one  can  hardly  deny  that  these  definitions  of  the 
sphere  of  philosophy  suggest  a  worthy  and  permanent 
task ,  which  men  cannot  escape,  and  which  has  incalculable 
and  permanent  interest  for  men.  Religion,  certainly,  has 
no  quarrel  with  the  broad  task  of  philosophy  here  sug¬ 
gested,  and  it  is  worth  remembering  that  we  can  none  of 
us  help  having  some  kind  of  view  on  these  age-long 
philosophical  problems.  The  only  question  seems  to  be 

7  Reconstruction  in  Philosophy,  p.  53. 

8  Ibid.,  pp.  210-212. 


110  Seeing  Life  Whole 

whether  our  views  shall  be  well  thought  out  and  soundly 
based  or  not. 


m 

In  passing  from  the  definitions  of  the  sphere  of 
philosophy  to  fundamental  philosophic  points  of  view ,  the 
philosophical  emphasis  on  the  meaning  of  experience  as  a 
whole  brings  us  naturally  first  of  all  to  the  importance  of 
what  may  be  called  the  organic  view  of  truth,  where  truth 
is  conceived  not  as  a  closed  system  but  as  an  evolving 
organic  whole. 

1.  Various  considerations  lead  to  emphasis  upon  this 
organic  view  of  truth. 

For  it  is  to  be  noted,  in  the  first  place,  that  truth  comes 
not  by  men  keeping  silent  concerning  the  convictions  which 
have  been  gradually  wrought  in  them  by  experience,  but 
by  bearing  honest  testimony  to  the  truth  so  far  as  they 
have  seen  it,  in  the  firm  belief  that  what  truth  needs  is 
simply  a  fair  and  open  field,  and  that  in  such  a  field  the 
partialness  of  the  view  of  one  man  will  be  supplemented 
and  corrected  by  the  insights  of  others. 

This  is  the  essence  of  the  Socratic. method,  which  is  not 
a  mere  pedagogic  device  to  bring  minds  to  foreordained 
conclusions,  but  a  method  of  inquiry,  whose  success  de¬ 
pends  on  each  man’s  bearing  his  honest  testimony  to  the 
truth  as  he  sees  it.  It  assumes  that  the  whole  truth  is  not 
in  a  man  but  in  all  men,  and,  so  far  as  it  is  in  a  single  man, 
is  above  all  in  his  whole  personality,  not  in  some  fragment 
of  it. 

This  organic  view  of  truth  also  emphasizes,  it  will  be 
noticed,  the  fellowship  and  cooperation  in  experiment  and 
research  of  the  scientific  method ,  as  we  have  already  seen 
it.  It  recognizes  the  imperativeness  of  welcoming  truth 


The  Philosophical  Approach  111 

from  every  quarter ;  that  truth  cannot  come  from  conceit 
on  one’s  own  part,  or  from  depreciation  of  the  value  which 
another  brings.  And  in  this  organic  view  of  the  truth 
there  is  not  only  this  emphasis  on  fellowship  and  coopera¬ 
tion,  but  also,  as  we  have  seen,  the  necessity  of  the  honest 
reaction  of  each  one  on  the  problem  faced,  the  determina¬ 
tion  of  each  to  see  the  new  as  new,  and  in  this  again  to 
find  one’s  limitations  corrected  by  others. 

Society  needs  at  every  step  the  full  and  free  initiative 
of  the  individual ,  the  possibility  for  each  to  make  his 
completest  contribution  to  the  life  of  the  whole.  The 
social  consciousness,  with  its  threefold  conviction  of  the 
essential  likeness  of  men,  of  the  inevitable  mutual  influence 
of  men,  and  of  the  priceless  value  and  inviolable  sacredness 
of  every  person,  fits,  it  will  be  seen,  right  into  this  organic 
view  of  the  truth ;  for  the  pursuit  of  the  organic  view  of 
the  truth  is  in  itself  an  essentially  social  process. 

The  organic  view  of  the  truth  calls,  thus,  for  that 
fundamental  tolerance  which  Kidd  believes  is  absolutely 
basic  in  the  progress  of  western  civilization.  But  it  is  a 
tolerance  that  has  convictions  and  is  in  earnest  in  pursuit 
of  the  truth,  not  an  empty  indifference  and  not  lack  of 
discrimination.  It  concerns  us,  therefore,  to  take  the 
organic  view  of  truth  in  all  our  philosophy. 

2.  We  turn  naturally  next  to  the  tests  of  truth  or 
reality . 

If  we  are  to  do  any  thinking  at  all,  we  must  assume 
that  we  can  think.  That  is,  we  must  assume,  on  the  one 
hand,  that  we  can  trust  our  faculties  at  least  to  some 
degree,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  can  believe  that  the  world 
is  a  place  where  thinking  can  be  done,  where  it  is  at  least 
possible.  This  is  a  basic  assumption  and  may  be  said  to 
be  the  major  premise  of  all  our  thinking  of  every  kind, 


112 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

whether  scientific  or  philosophical,  whether  holding  to  one 
or  another  theory  of  the  universe.  Lotze  states  the  whole 
position  in  thoroughgoing  fashion: 

“Our  thoughts  receive  the  stamp  of  certainty  by  being  re¬ 
duced  to  either  the  already  proved  certainty  of  others,  or  to 
that  of  immediate  truths  which  neither  need  nor  are  sus¬ 
ceptible  of  proof.  The  trust  which  we  repose  on  the  one 
hand  in  the  laws  of  thought  by  means  of  which  this  reduction 
is  accomplished,  and  on  the  other  hand  in  the  simple  and 
immediate  cognitions  to  which  this  leads  us,  may  be  guarded 
by  repeated  and  careful  proof  from  the  influence  of  preju¬ 
dices  of  which  the  persuasive  force  is  accidental  and  evanes¬ 
cent;  but  on  the  other  hand  no  proof  can  guard  against  a 
doubt  which  suspects  of  possible  error  that  which  men  have 
always  found  to  be  a  necessity  of  thought.  A  scepticism  that 
does  not  demonstrate  from  individual  contradictions  which 
may  be  cited  the  erroneousness  of  specified  prejudices,  and 
hence  the  possibility  of  correcting  them,  but  goes  on  cause¬ 
lessly  repeating  the  simple  question  whether  in  the  end  every¬ 
thing  is  not  really  quite  different  from  that  which  we  neces¬ 
sarily  think  it  to  be,  would,  in  banishing  certainty  wholly 
from  the  world,  also  destroy  all  the  worth  of  reality.  That, 
however,  this  cannot  be — that  the  world  cannot  he  a  mere 
meaningless  absurdity — is  a  moral  conviction,  which  is  the 
ultimate  ground  of  our  belief  in  our  capacity  of  cognising  the 
truth,  and  in  the  general  possibility  of  scientific  knowledge. 
But  this  conviction  does  not  define  the  extent  of  such 
knowledge.”  9 

This  is  assuming  or  making  our  major  premise  the  unity 
of  truth,  that  truth  cannot  contradict  itself,  and  that  we 
may  rest  in  that  conviction.  It  is  also  assuming  that  the 
world  is  a  rational  world  in  two  great  senses :  as  meeting 
the  test  of  logical  consistency  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
test  of  worth  on  the  other.10  As  a  whole  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  a  faith  essentially  religious  logically 

9  Microcosmus,  Vol.  IT,  pp.  346-7. 

10  Cf.  King,  The  Seeming  Unreality  of  the  Spiritual  Life ,  pp.  201, 
204-10. 


The  Philosophical  Approach  113 

underlies  all  our  thinking,  all  work  worth  doing,  all  our 
striving  for  character,  and  all  earnest  social  service.11 
From  the  religious  point  of  view  this  means  that  the 
assumption  of  God  is  practically  the  major  premise  of  all 
our  thinking.  For.  as  I  have  elsewhere  said:  12  Our  only 
possible  standard  of  truth  is  in  our  own  constitution.  In 
consequence,  all  proof  of  every  kind  moves  on  a  double 
assumption:  first,  that  the  world  is  a  sphere  of  rational 
thinking — must  satisfy  the  intellect ;  second,  that  the 
world  is  a  sphere  of  rational  living — must  satisfy  the 
whole  man.  One  might  say  that  this  double  assumption 
is  the  heart  of  the  intention  of  the  so-called  ontological 
argument  for  the  existence  of  God,  and  suggests  the  two 
forms  in  which  that  argument  may  be  stated,  or  the  double 
interpretation  of  our  necessary  constant  assumption  that 
the  world  is  a  “rational,”  or  an  “honest”  world.  To  see, 
now,  the  fundamental  nature  of  these  two  great  assump¬ 
tions  that  underlie  all  our  thinking  and  living,  is  really  to 
see  that  the  existence  of  a  God  of  reason  and  love  is  so 
certain  and  fundamental  a  fact  that  it  really  has  to  be 
assumed  in  all  thinking  and  living — a  fact  that  cannot  be 
proved  just  because  it  is  the  basis  of  all  proof ; — the 
postulate,  without  which  we  should  ultimately  be  driven  to 
give  up  altogether  the  possibility  of  rational  thinking. 

Again  a  test  of  truth  that  has  assumed  great  impor¬ 
tance  in  the  development  of  modern  science  is  the  test  of 
the  working  hypothesis ,  the  verification  of  a  theory  by 
putting  it  to  the  test  of  actual  practice.  Will  the 
hypothesis  work?  Does  it  fit  into  that  reality  that  we 
have  elsewhere  found  assured?  Does  it  give  us  any 
rational  whole  in  our  experience?  This  pragmatic  test  of 
truth  is  that  which  Dewey  emphasizes  when  he  says :  “By 

11  Cf.  King,  op.  cit.,  pp.  181-186. 

“  Op  cit.,  pp.  204  ff. 


m 


Seevng  Life  Whole 

their  fruits  shall  ye  know  them.  That  which  guides  us 
truly  is  true — demonstrated  capacity  for  such  guidance  is 
precisely  what  is  meant  by  truth.”  13 

Hocking  believes  that  we  should  make  a  sharp  discrimi¬ 
nation  between  negative  pragmatism  and  positive  prag¬ 
matism,  and  that  the  truth  of  pragmatism  lies  on  the 
negative  side : 

“The  pragmatic  test  has  meant  much  in  our  time  as  a 
principle  of  criticism,  in  awakening  the  philosophic  conscience 
to  the  simple  need  of  fruitfulness  and  moral  effect  as  a 
voucher  of  truth.  It  is  this  critical  pragmatism  which  first 
and  widely  appeals  to  the  intellectual  conscience  at  large. 
Negative  pragmatism ,  I  shall  call  it:  whose  principle  is,  * That 
which  does  not  work  is  not  true  *  The  corresponding  positive 
principle,  ‘Whatever  works  is  true,’  I  regard  as  neither  valid 
nor  useful.  But  invaluable  as  a  guide  do  I  find  this  negative 
test:  if  a  theory  has  no  consequences,  or  bad  ones;  if  it 
makes  no  difference  to  men,  or  else  undesirable  differences;  if 
it  lowers  the  capacity  of  men  to  meet  the  stress  of  existence, 
or  diminishes  the  worth  to  them  of  what  existence  they  have; 
such  a  theory  is  somehow  false,  and  we  have  no  peace  until 
it  is  remedied.”  14 

Another  test  of  reality  is  the  test,  to  which  we  have 
repeatedly  referred,  of  the  whole  man  as  the  organ  of  the 
spiritual.  This  growing  emphasis  in  our  time  on  wholeness 
has  many  illustrations.  An  instance  is  found  in  Mc- 
Dougall’s  insistence  that  “even  the  most  purely  instinctive 
action  is  the  outcome  of  a  distinctly  mental  process  .  .  . 
and  one  which,  like  every  other  mental  process,  has,  and 
can  only  be  fully  described  in  terms  of,  the  three  aspects 
of  all  mental  process — the  cognitive,  the  affective,  and  the 
conative  aspects ;  that  is  to  say,  every  instance  of  instinc¬ 
tive  behavior  involves  a  knowing  of  some  thing  or  object, 

13  Reconstruction  in  Philosophy,  pp.  156  ff. 

14  The  Meaning  of  Qod  in  Human  Experience,  pp.  xiii  ff. 


The  Philosophical  Approach  115 

a  feeling  in  regard  to  it,  and  a  striving  towards  or  away 
from  that  object.”  15  So  Hocking  makes  his  appeal  to 
wholeness  when  he  calls  his  philosophic  view  a  “point  of 
convergence,”  and  says : 

‘‘It  is  the  finished  pragmatist  who  best  knows  the  need  of 
the  absolute.  It  is  the  finished  mystic  who  best  knows  the 
need  of  active  life  and  its  mediation.  It  is  the  finished  idealist 
who  best  knows  the  need  of  the  realistic  elements  of  ex¬ 
perience;  the  mystical  and  authoritative  elements  of  faith.  I 
know  not  what  name  to  give  to  this  point  of  convergence,  nor 
does  name  much  matter:  it  is  realism,  it  is  mysticism,  it  is 
idealism  also,  its  identity,  I  believe,  not  broken.  For  in  so 
far  as  idealism  announces  the  liberty  of  thought,  the  spir¬ 
ituality  of  the  world,  idealism  is  but  another  name  for  phi¬ 
losophy — all  philosophy  is  idealism.  It  is  only  the  radical 
idealist  who  is  able  to  give  full  credit  to  the  realistic,  the 
naturalistic,  even  the  materialistic  aspects  of  the  world  he 
lives  in.”  16 

Another  common  test  that  men  instinctively  apply  is 
the  test  of  many  minds  in  the  long  run  of  human  experi¬ 
ence.  This  is  the  test  which  underlies  Lincoln’s  often 
quoted  statement  on  democracy,  that  you  can  fool  all  of 
the  people  part  of  the  time,  and  part  of  the  people  all  of 
the  time,  but  you  can’t  fool  all  of  the  people  all  of  the 
time.  In  spite  of  the  herd  instinct  and  its  power  and 
dangers,  there  is  real  value  in  this  test  of  many  minds. 

Another  closely  allied  test  is  the  test  of  great  minds — 
minds  with  initiative,  creative  minds,  recognized  experts  in 
given  fields,  authorities  in  the  true  sense.  For,  as  we  have 
seen  in  our  discussion  of  the  way  into  the  great  values  of 
life,  it  is  the  geniuses,  the  great  souls  of  large  experience 
in  a  given  realm,  by  whom  we  are  naturally  led  to  the  best 
the  race  has  yet  achieved. 

15  Social  Psychology,  p.  26. 

18  Op.  cit.,  pp.  xix-xx. 


116 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

And  both  these  tests,  of  the  many  minds  and  of  great 
minds,  connect  themselves  inevitably  with  the  test  of  the 
historic  trend  of  the  progress  of  the  race,  the  test  of  racial 
experience.  In  the  light  of  the  theory  of  evolution  we 
have  naturally  come  to  conceive  the  great  outstanding 
ethical  standards  and  ideals  of  the  race  as  to  a  large 
extent,  at  least,  the  outcome  of  racial  experience.  No 
doubt  we  must  be  on  our  guard  against  the  static  concep¬ 
tion  of  standards  and  ideals,  and  should  not  forget  that 
conventions  must  change  as  ethical  growth  goes  on. 
“Hence,”  as  Schiller  says,  “  ‘transvaluations’  must  be 
regarded  as  normal  and  entirely  legitimate  occurrences  in 
every  sphere  of  values.” 17  And  yet  we  cannot  help 
drawing  inferences  from  the  historic  trend  of  the  race. 
But  we  need  to  be  keenly  alert,  in  the  interpretation  of 
history,  against  the  bias  that  selects  out  such  phenomena 
in  history  as  will  simply  confirm  a  foregone  conclusion. 

Another  test  of  great  value  in  the  complexity  of  modern 
civilization  is  the  test  of  the  converging  of  many  lines  of 
fact  and  experience  and  thought.  It  was  this  test  which 
Hocking  was  using  in  the  definition  of  his  own  philosophi¬ 
cal  viewpoint,  and  we  are  ourselves  using  this  test  in  the 
method  adopted  of  a  sixfold  approach  to  our  general 
problem  of  a  Christian  philosophy  of  life.  Where  a  num¬ 
ber  of  more  or  less  independent  lines  of  thought  do  tend 
to  converge  upon  a  conclusion,  we  rightly  give  great 
weight  to  the  conclusion  so  reached.  If,  for  example, 
historic,  psychologic,  scientific,  philosophic,  ethical  and 
social  emphases  all  point  to  a  certain  goal,  that  goal  will 
rightly  seem  to  us  strongly  verified.18 

The  very  complexity  of  the  world  and  of  human  nature, 

17  Article  “Value,”  Encyc.  of  Religion  and  Ethics,  p.  588. 

18  Cf.  King,  The  Seeming  Unreality  of  the  Spiritual  Life,  pp.  165- 
180. 


The  Philosophical  Approach  117 

and  growing  experience  in  so  complex  a  life,  suggest  that 
any  extreme,  one-sided  view  is  pretty  certain  not  to 
represent  the  full  truth,  but  that  there  will  surely  be  some 
balancing  facts  which  must  be  taken  into  account.  For 
the  very  unity  of  man’s  nature  means  that  it  will  certainly 
avenge  itself  for  any  disregard  of  any  real  part  of  its 
experience.  This  brings  us  to  another  test,  especially 
suggested  by  psychology:  the  test  of  the  paradox.  The 
test  of  the  paradox  is  really  a  part  of  the  emphasis  on 
seeing  life  whole ;  for  it  has  grown  up  in  universal  human 
experience.  Men  have  repeatedly  found  in  many  situa¬ 
tions  in  life  that  something  like  Hegel’s  transcending  syn¬ 
thesis  is  called  for,  that  includes  the  truth  of  both  sides 
of  a  practical  paradox  and  brings  both  together.  These 
paradoxes  of  course  go  back  to  the  paradoxes  in  man’s 
own  constitution:  such  paradoxes  as  self-assertion  and 
self-surrender;  as  the  stable  and  unstable  types  of  men; 
as  Christ’s  great  all-inclusive  paradox  of  saving  one’s  life 
by  losing  it ;  and  as  the  paradox  of  the  necessary  combina¬ 
tion  in  our  life  of  both  complexity  and  simplicity.  We 
may  well  use  the  test  of  one  of  these  paradoxes  as  applied 
to  religion:  the  test  of  both  likeness  and  difference;  that 
religion,  in  the  first  place,  if  it  is  to  seem  most  real  to  us, 
must  be  like  those  other  realms  of  experience  which  have 
seemed  to  us  most  real;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
religion  must  be  different  from  all  other  realms,  as  having 
a  certain  uniqueness  which  cannot  be  spared,  and  therefore 
having  an  indispensable  contribution  to  make  to  life. 
Both  likeness  and  difference  are  necessary,  in  spite  of  the 
seeming  paradox.19 

James  suggests  a  useful  threefold  test  of  opinions  and 
experiences :  immediate  luminousness,  philosophical  rea- 

10  Cf.  King,  The  Seeming  Unreality  of  the  Spiritual  Life,  pp.  14- 
17;  Cf.  Sheldon,  Strife  of  Systems  and  Productive  Duality. 


118 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

sonableness,  and  moral  helpfulness.  This  test  of  James’ 
is,  of  course,  a  direct  appeal  to  the  judgment  of  the  whole 
man. 

There  is  a  negative  test  also  of  truth  or  reality,  which 
deserves  to  be  included  in  this  survey.  The  great  achieve¬ 
ments  of  modern  science  have  led  some  to  regard  the  con¬ 
ceptions  which  underlie  the  mathematico-mechanical  view 
of  nature  as  though  they  were  peculiarly  real,  the  essen¬ 
tial  realities  of  the  universe,  and  to  hold  that  they  con¬ 
stituted  the  superior  “hard  facts”  with  which  we  have  to 
do.  But  atoms  are  no  more  real  than  minds,  or  the  fact 
that  man  has  two  appetites  more  real  than  man’s  sense  of 
truth,  of  goodness,  and  of  beauty.  The  man  who  seeks 
the  truth,  who  seeks  reality,  must  be  prepared  to  face  the 
facts  wherever  those  facts  lie. 

Religion  believes  in  these  tests  of  truth  and  reality  and 
has  no  occasion  to  shrink  from  them,  for  they  are  a  part 
of  her  faith  in  God  and  in  a  world  that  is  God’s  world. 
She  believes  so  fully  in  the  whole  man  as  the  organ  of  the 
spiritual  that  she  can  have  no  quarrel  with  these  many- 
sided  tests  of  truth. 

3.  Another  point  of  view  that  helps  to  clearness  in  the 
philosophic  realm  is  that  of  the  three  spheres  of  reality , 
the  is ,  the  must ,  and  the  ought. 

It  is  worth  while  to  give  Lotze’s  full  putting  of  this 
thought : 

“Our  whole  theory  of  the  universe  has  three  starting-points. 
We  find  within  ourselves  a  knowledge  of  universal  laws,  which, 
without  themselves  giving  rise  to  any  particular  form  of 
existence,  force  themselves  on  our  attention  as  the  necessary 
and  immediately  certain  limits  within  which  all  reality  must 
move.  On  the  other  hand,  we  find  within  ourselves  an  in¬ 
stinct  bidding  us  discern  in  Ideas  of  the  good,  the  beautiful, 
and  the  holy ,  the  one  indefeasible  end  whence  alone  reality 


The  Philosophical  Approach  119 

derives  any  value;  but  even  this  end  does  not  bring  to  our 
cognition  the  special  form  of  the  means  by  which  it  is  to  be 
attained.  Between  these  two  extreme  points  extends  for  us  a 
third  region — that  of  experience — boundless  in  the  wealth  of 
its  forms  and  events,  unknown  in  its  origin.  We  can  track 
into  this  wealth  the  universal  Laws  imposed  on  all  phenomena. 
...  In  this  wealth  of  reality  we  may  also  seek  the  radiance  of 
those  Ideas  which  give  worth  to  all  being  and  doing.  .  .  . 
But  the  more,  while  endeavouring  to  fulfil  one  of  these  two 
tasks,  we  become  absorbed  in  the  details  of  Nature’s  course, 
the  more  does  Nature’s  own  originality  again  come  to  the 
front — the  independent  wealth  of  forms  in  which  it  envelops 
the  universal  and  colourless  laws  of  mechanism,  and  the  self- 
will  with  which  it  carries  out  Ideas  not  always  in  what  seems 
to  us  the  shortest  way,  but  by  circuitous  paths  and  in  ac¬ 
cordance  with  general  and  far-reaching  habits  of  working.”  20 

No  one  of  these  three  spheres  of  reality  can  replace  any 
other.  Nor  can  we  rid  ourselves  of  any  one  of  the  three. 
And  though  we  study  incessantly  the  third  region,  that  of 
experience — the  is — for  all  possible  light  upon  the  must 
and  the  ought ,  if  we  are  to  be  successful  in  thinking  the 
world  through  into  final  unity,  we  shall  all  of  us  have  to 
start  in  our  final  unifying  statement  with  the  ought ,  with 
the  teleological  view  of  the  essence  of  the  world.21  The 
ought  we  have  to  think  of  as  the  ideal  goal  of  the  universe ; 
but  for  its  embodiment  it  requires  laws,  the  must ,  and  it 
requires  also  a  given  content,  a  certain  matter  of  fact, 
the  is.  Three  of  the  most  influential  philosophical  minds 
of  the  generation  just  past,  Lotze,  Wundt,  and  Paulsen, 
agree  that  ethics  must  thus  determine  metaphysics ;  that 
the  ought  must  determine  the  must  and  the  is.22 

4.  It  helps  to  clearness  also  to  see  that  the  ought ,  the 
ideal  in  the  widest  conception  we  have  of  it,  is  itself  at 

20  Microcosmus,  Vol.  I,  pp.  417-18. 

31  Cf.  Lotze,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  719  flf. 

50  Cf.  King,  Rational  Living,  p.  166. 


120 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

least  threefold,  gathering,  as  a  result  of  the  experience  of 
the  race,  around  the  three  great  ideals  of  truths  goodness , 
and  beauty ,  which  correspond  to  the  three  aspects  of 
man’s  ideal  nature,  and  to  three  great  realms  of  value: 
unifying  intellectual  values,  ethical  values,  and  esthetic 
values.  And  yet  all  belong  indubitably  together.  These 
three  may  be  said  to  make  our  great  irreducible  universe 
of  the  ideal.  And  the  discernment  and  formulation  of 
them  are  an  expression  of  one  of  the  surest  and  most 
significant  insights  growing  out  of  the  experience  of  the 
race.  They  may  be  said  to  constitute  the  great  affirma¬ 
tions  of  religious  faith,  for  they  deal  with  a  world  of 
persons,  and  naturally  look  to  an  ultimate  source  not 
less  than  personal.  As  Streeter  puts  it :  23 

“The  worship  of  God  is  not  something  different  from  the 
love  of  Humanity,  the  passion  for  the  Beautiful,  and  the 
devotion  to  Truth;  it  is  not  something  which  exists  alongside 
of  these  and  in  addition  to  them,  it  is  what  these  actually  are 
whenever  and  in  so  far  as  they  are  realised  in  their  highest 
form,  in  their  true  co-ordination,  and  in  their  real  meaning. 
Conscious  worship  of  the  Divine  is  not  an  extra,  it  is  the 
summary  and  the  explanation  of  every  separate  and  depart¬ 
mental  pursuit  of  the  Ideal.  And  yet  to  say  without  further 
explication  that  Worship  is  merely  the  sum  total  of  the  love 
of  Goodness,  Beauty  and  Truth,  all  realised  in  perfect  har¬ 
mony  and  proportion,  ts  to  leave  out  something  essential. 
The  love  of  Goodness  means  less  than  the  love  of  God,  unless 
we  recollect  that  it  must  include  not  merely  the  love  of  the 
mother  for  the  babe,  but  also  that  of  the  babe  to  the  mother 
— reverence,  gratitude,  unqualified  trust,  as  well  as  an  ecstasy 
of  self-devotion.  The  service  of  man  is  the  most  essential 
activity  in  the  service  of  God,  and  the  love  of  humanity  is 
a  necessary  element  in  the  love  of  God,  but  it  is  not  the  whole 
of  it;  and  it  only  becomes  the  whole  of  it  when  directed 
towards  that  ideal  Humanity  which  is  for  us  the  ‘image  of 

*  Concerning  Prayer ,  pp.  245-247,  249. 


The  Philosophical  Approach  121 

the  invisible  God.’  .  .  .  The  conception  of  Worship  is  that 
which  co-ordinates  and  illustrates  the  three  parallel  aspira¬ 
tions  of  the  human  mind,  the  passion  for  Good,  for  Beauty 
and  for  Truth.  .  .  .  Thus  devotion  to  Goodness,  devotion  to 
Beauty,  devotion  to  Truth  in  the  last  resort  can  only  coexist, 
can  only  each  attain  its  true  character,  if  the  object  of  the 
individual’s  own  special  interest  is  seen  to  be  an  expression 
of  and  a  part  of  the  Eternal  Harmony  which  is  above  all, 
which  is  in  all,  and  which  is  all.  When  this  is  consciously 
realised,  and  all  the  faculties  are  consciously  and  spon¬ 
taneously  orientated  in  that  direction.  Worship  in  its  highest 
form  begins.” 

Men  have  been  slow  to  grasp  the  full  meaning  of  the 
race’s  practically  universal  affirmation  of  these  values  of 
the  True,  the  Good,  and  the  Beautiful,  as  real  and 
inescapable.  Our  minds  are  real  facts,  and  their  experi¬ 
ence  and  affirmation  of  truth,  goodness  and  beauty  are 
facts.  The  sense  of  value  would  go  if  faith  in  their 
objective  reality  vanished.  That  would  make  a  thor¬ 
oughly  irrational  world,  meeting  none  of  the  highest  tests 
of  reality.  Hoffding  puts  most  compactly  a  single  aspect 
of  this  necessary  objectivity  of  truth,  goodness  and 
beauty :  24  “There  are  lines  of  evolution  which  have  their 
end  in  ethical  idealism,  in  a  kingdom  of  values,  which 
must  struggle  for  life  as  all  things  in  the  world  must  do, 
but  a  kingdom  which  has  its  firm  foundation  in  reality.” 

5.  But  an  adequate  philosophy,  particularly  in  a 
scientific  age,  must  do  full  justice  to  the  mission  of 
mechanism ,26  and  it  would  be  difficult  to  state  that  mission 
more  concisely  and  justly  than  Lotze  has  done,  in  what  is 
practically  the  thesis  of  his  whole  philosophy,26  where  he 

84  Evolution  in  Modem  Thought,  p.  222. 

85  Cf.  Lotze,  Microcosmus,  Vol.  II,  p.  727. 

5,0  Mi-cro-cosmms,  Vol.  I,  p.  xvi. 


122 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

seeks  to  show  “how  absolutely  universal  is  the  extent  and 
at  the  same  time  how  completely  subordinate  the  signifi¬ 
cance ,  of  the  mission  which  mechanism  has  to  fulfil  in  the 
structure  of  the  world”  In  other  words,  “nowhere  is 
mechanism  the  essence  of  the  matter;  but  nowhere  does 
being  assume  another  form  of  finite  existence  except 
through  it.”  27  On  the  one  hand,  it  must  be  plain  that 
mechanism  is  absolutely  universal  in  extent ;  that  agency, 
machinery,  organization  are  always  necessary ;  that 
nothing  can  take  place  in  the  realm  of  nature  or  spirit 
without  means.  And  this  insistence  on  mechanism’s  abso¬ 
lute  universality  in  extent  corresponds  to  science’s  funda¬ 
mental  conviction  of  the  universality  of  law.  On  the  other 
hand,  Lotze  insists  that  mechanism  is  completely  sub¬ 
ordinate  in  significance.  It  is  means,  not  end,  and  its 
whole  value  lies  in  the  end  for  which  the  means  exist.  For 
us  all,  a  rational  world  requires  such  subordination  of  the 
machinery  of  the  world.  We  need  to  know  that  values 
can  conquer;  that  the  universe  is  on  the  side  of  the 
righteous  will.  The  whole  religious  interest  in  the  ques¬ 
tion  of  miracle,  it  should  be  noticed,  however  one  deals 
with  that  problem,  lies  not  in  emphasis  on  isolated  marvel, 
but  at  just  this  point:  whether  men  can  believe  in  the 
supremacy  of  the  ideal  values  in  the  universe  over  the 
machinery  of  the  universe.  This  is  not  a  selfish  grasping 
for  our  own  little  personal  reward  but  for  ground  for 
faith  in  an  honest  world  and  in  the  character  of  God. 
“We  regard  as  incomplete  any  philosophy  which  holds 
that  good  may  vanish  out  of  the  universe  unrequited.”  28 
It  is  well  to  remember,  also,  that  even  in  natural  science, 
machinery  is  not  the  whole;  quality  and  content  are  also 
absolutely  essential.  In  the  emphasis,  therefore,  upon 

**  Microcosmus,  Vol.  I,  pp.  399-400. 

36  Cf.  Lotze,  Microcosmus ,  Vol.  II,  p.  473. 


The  Philosophical  Approach  123 

mechanism  as,  on  the  one  hand,  absolutely  universal  in 
extent,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  completely  subordinate  in 
significance,  we  are  doing  justice  both  to  the  real  and  to 
the  ideal  sides,  and  looking  to  a  final  philosophy  of  ideal- 
realism  or  real-idealism. 


IV 

In  this  survey  of  fundamental  philosophical  viewpoints, 
and  in  close  connection  with  the  consideration  of  the 
mission  of  mechanism,  we  need  to  return  to  the  problem  of 
the  possible  harmony  of  the  two  final  questions  concerning 
phenomena:  the  question  of  process,  of  immediate  causal 
connection, — How  did  it  come  to  be?  which  is  the  question 
of  empirical  science ;  and,  second,  the  question  of  meaning, 
of  ideal  interpretation, — What  does  it  mean?  the  question 
of  philosophy  and  the  ideal  interests.  One  of  these  ques¬ 
tions  is  as  real  and  as  justified  and  as  necessary  as  the 
other.  As  has  been  already  pointed  out,  they  supplement 
each  other,  and,  in  all  preliminary  inquiry  certainly,  have 
no  quarrel  with  one  another.  But  we  cannot  stop,  of 
course,  with  a  final  irreconcilable  dualism  between  the  two. 
There  must  be  ultimate  unity.  We  cannot  get  on  with  a 
final  denial  of  the  unity  of  truth.  An  ultimately  rational 
immerse,  that  is,  must  be  so  constituted  that  the  process 
shall  not  be  so  inconsistent  with  the  meaning  as  to  make 
ultimate  unity  impossible.  The  universe  must  be  on  the 
side  of  the  ethical  will,  in  the  struggle  for  existence  of  the 
values  for  which  it  stands.  That  is,  the  universe  must  be 
so  made  that  we  shall  have  good  grounds  to  believe  that 
values  will  be  conserved  and  will  make  progress.  This 
means,  in  turn,  that  God’s  purpose  in  the  universe  and  in 
its  constitution  must  be  such  as  shall  be  in  line  with  man’s 
own  highest  purposes,  that  man  shall  not  be  at  endless 


124 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

cross  purposes  with  himself.  There  could  be  no  possible 
adequate  religion  otherwise.  Even  evolution  feels  that  it 
must  believe  that  while  adaptation  to  environment  does 
not  always  mean  progress  in  a  particular  organism,  in  the 
large  and  in  the  long  run  it  does  mean  progress.  We 
could  hardly  else  justify  the  evolutionary  process  of  the 
world  at  all. 

What  grounds  for  faith  are  there ,  then,  for  the  ultimate 
harmony  of  process  and  meaning ,  of  mechanism  and 
values,  of  the  mechanical  and  the  ideal,  of  empirical 
science  and  philosophy? 

In  the  first  place,  science's  universality  of  law,  as  Lotze 
says,  must  be  taken  as  only  a  disguised  expression  of  the 
unity  of  the  Infinite,  and  so  conceived  it  is  both  a  scientific 
and  a  philosophic  insistence,  and  we  have  no  reason  to 
expect  final  conflict  between  process  and  meaning.  To 
like  import  Haering  says : 29  “The  more  clearly  the 
conception  of  science  is  grasped,  the  less,  in  the  long  run, 
can  people  fail  to  discover  the  limit  to  its  domination, 
as  supplied  by  itself,  or  the  presence  of  other  mental 
powers  of  the  strongest  kind ;  and  the  less  can  the  desire, 
ineradicable  in  the  human  mind  that  is  not  distorted,  for 
an  ultimate  conviction  regarding  the  world  as  a  unity,  be 
suppressed.” 

We  have  also  seen  that  in  order  to  reach  any  final  unity 
of  the  world,  with  its  three  realms  of  reality, — the  is,  the 
must,  and  the  ought , — we  must  begin  with  the  ought,  with 
the  ideal;  for  we  cannot  derive  the  ought  from  either  the 
must  or  the  is.  But  beginning  with  the  ought,  we  may 
reach  faith,  at  least,  in  an  ultimate  unity  here. 

In  the  evolution  process  itself,  also,  the  condition  of  all 
progress  lies  in  the  variations,  which  are  not  causally 
explained,  that  is,  in  individuality,  and  as  evolution 
“  The  Christian  Faith,  Vol.  I,  p.  162. 


125 


The  Philosophical  Approach 

reaches  man,  in  human  individuality.  Here,  in  the  recog¬ 
nition  of  the  significance  of  human  individuality  both  in 
process  and  in  meaning,  the  two  come  together,  and  give 
one  once  more  an  assurance  of  final  unity. 

More  and  more,  also,  in  the  process  of  evolution  we  are 
compelled  to  recognize  two  aspects  of  reality  from  the 
beginning  of  life,  the  mental  and  the  physical ,  mutually 
adjusted  and  ever  interacting — an  actual  working  unity 
at  least.  A  philosophy  which  recognizes  this  “recognizes 
the  facts  of  the  case  and  does  not  delude  the  mind  by 
offering  a  solution  which  is  in  reality  no  solution  at  all.”  30 
Where  both  aspects  of  man’s  nature  are  recognized,  it  is 
plain  that  the  mental  becomes  increasingly  significant  and 
powerful  as  the  evolution  goes  on,  and  grows  continually 
in  the  knowledge  of  the  world  and  of  life.  The  “matter,” 
too,  with  which  we  have  to  do,  it  is  becoming  increasingly 
plain,  is  no  dead  inert  static  stuff,  but  a  dynamic  energy 
of  inconceivable  power,  a  kind  of  “matter”  that  might 
well  be  called  “of  the  nature  of  mind” ;  particularly  since 
the  only  power  we  directly  know  from  within  is  will 
power.31 

Moreover,  for  the  ultimate  harmony  of  process  and  of 
meaning,  of  science  and  of  philosophy,  and  particularly  in 
the  theistic  interpretation  of  evolution,  we  have  to  recog¬ 
nize  both  the  immanence  and  transcendence  of  God.  For, 
if  the  religious  point  of  view  is  to  be  taken  at  all,  the 
world  must  be  conceived  as  neither  self-originating  nor 
self-sustaining.  For  if  God  is  necessary  anywhere  he  is 
necessary  everywhere.  There  are  no  breaks  in  the  evolu- 

w  Outline  of  Science,  Vol.  II,  p.  549.  Cf.  also  Pratt  on  "a  dualism 
of  process  and  not  necessarily  of  substance,”  Matter  and  Spirit, 
pp.  183  if. 

81  Cf.  McDougall,  Social  Psychology,  pp.  361-363:  ‘‘Of  the  two  types 
of  process,  we  certainly  understand  the  appetitive  more  intimately 
than  the  mechanical.” 


126 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

tion  series  where  he  is  more  necessary  than  at  other  points. 
Nor  can  God’s  relation  to  the  universe  be  conceived  to  be 
an  external  finite  relation  to  the  process  of  things.  Rather 
must  he  be  thought  as  in  these  processes,  as  the  very  soul 
of  them.  But,  while  this  is  true,  no  satisfactory  religious 
conclusion  concerning  the  immanence  of  God  can  be 
reached  without  clearly  recognizing  that  the  immanence 
of  God  in  the  world  of  men  must  be  conceived  as  in  some 
respects  of  a  quite  different  kind  from  that  in  all  the  sub¬ 
human  world.  For  in  the  human  world  there  are  moral 
conditions  to  be  observed — some  genuine  self-conscious¬ 
ness,  and  free  moral  initiative,  that  make  personality  and 
character  possible.  We  are  thus  obliged  to  ask,  in  the 
case  of  men,  for  a  kind  of  separateness  from  God  that 
would  not  hold  for  the  lower  animals.  It  is  not  meta¬ 
physical  separateness  of  being  which  is  required  in  the 
case  of  man — all  our  being  roots  in  God — but  the  sepa¬ 
rateness  of  man’s  own  self-consciousness  and  free  moral 
self-determination.  If  these  are  guarded  the  real  person¬ 
ality  both  of  God  and  of  man  is  guarded.  As  Martineau 
says,  in  presenting  a  similar  view  of  God’s  immanence  in 
men:  “Here  is  a  holy  place  reserved  for  genuine  moral 
relations  and  personal  affections,  for  infinite  pity  and 
finite  sacrifice,  for  tears  of  compunction  and  the  embrace 
of  forgiveness,  and  all  the  hidden  life  by  which  the  soul 
ascends  to  God.”32 

It  is  also  to  be  noted  that  there  is  a  certain  “duplicity 
of  the  Infinite  Being”  at  work  in  all  finite  forces,  if  they 
are  to  be  regarded  as  real  causes  adequate  to  the  situa¬ 
tion.33  For  the  full  cause  is  never  really  present  for 
science,  even  in  its  strictly  scientific  investigations,  in  the 

“Quoted  by  McGiffert,  The  Rise  of  Modern  Religious  Ideas,  p. 
220. 

88  Cf.  King,  The  Reconstruction  of  Theology,  p.  64. 


127 


The  Philosophical  Approach 

sense  that  by  any  possible  analysis  of  the  present  stage  it 
is  able  to  prophesy  the  next  stage  independent  of  experi¬ 
ence.  In  such  a  situation  both  immanence  and  tran¬ 
scendence  are  demanded.34 

The  parallel  emphasis  on  transcendence ,  which  the 
unity  of  the  scientific  and  ideal  views  require,  may  be 
taken  at  least  to  mean,  in  the  first  place,  that  we  have  to 
do  with  no  finite  God ;  that  the  infinite  fulness  of  the  life 
of  God  is  not  exhausted  in  his  universe.  Men  must  know 
God,  that  is,  as  something  more  and  other  than  the 
evolutionary  process  of  things  and  animals  and  men,  in 
which  God  is.  For  worship  and  vital  relation  to  God 
require  another  than  oneself,  however  intimate  the  relation 
between  the  two  may  be.  Otherwise  the  highest  we  know 
will  be  man,  and  Humanity  necessarily  becomes  our  god, 
as  Frederic  Harrison’s  Positivism  asserts.35 

Pringle-Pattison  thus  sums  up  the  necessity  of  both 
immanence  and  transcendence  for  a  Christian  view  of  God 
and  the  world:  38  “The  immanent  God  is  thus  always  the 
infinitely  transcendent.  The  two  aspects  imply  one 
another.  A  purely  immanental  theory  means  the  denial 
of  the  divine  altogether  as  in  any  way  distinguishable 
from  the  human,  and  involves,  therefore,  the  unqualified 
acceptance  of  everything  just  as  it  is.  A  theory  of  pure 
transcendence,  on  the  other  hand,  tends  to  leave  us  with 
a  ‘mighty  Darkness  filling  the  seat  of  power,’  for  only  so 
far  as  God  is  present  in  our  experience  can  we  know  any¬ 
thing  about  Him  at  all.  It  is  the  immanence  of  the 
transcendent,  the  presence  of  the  infinite  in  our  finite 
lives,  that  alone  explains  the  essential  nature  of  man.” 
So  Haering  says : 87  “To  be  sure,  the  forms  of  our 

84  Cf.  Microcosmus,  Vol.  T,  pp.  382,  384. 

83  Cf.  King,  Reconstruction  in  Theology ,  p.  108. 

88  The  Spirit,  edited  by  Streeter,  pp.  21-22. 

”  The  Christian  Faith,  Vol.  I,  p.  351. 


128 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

thought  are  changing  away  from  the  transcendence  of 
God,  and  are  deepening  in  the  measure  in  which  we  realize 
His  immanence,  rightly  understood.  But  if  the  ultimate 
mystery  is  shifted  to  the  soul  of  man  itself,  if  the  ‘God  in 
man’s  own  heart’  is  in  man’s  heart  alone,  real  religion 
ceases,  and  all  sorts  of  substitutes,  chiefly  esthetic,  take 
its  place.” 

And  finally,  in  this  harmonizing  of  the  scientific  and 
ideal  viewpoints,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  even  the  so-called 
necessary  truths  are  not  to  he  thought  of  as  a  world 
above  God ,  to  which  he  must  be  subject,  but  only  the 
eternal  habitudes  of  God  himself.  This  is  neither  to  say 
with  Duns  Scotus  that  the  truth  is  true  and  the  good  is 
good  because  God  wills  it;  nor  yet  to  say  with  Thomas 
Aquinas  that  God  wills  the  true  because  it  is  true  and  the 
good  because  it  is  good.  Both  views  alike  assume  the 
possibility  of  a  fragmentary  God,  a  God  for  whom  at  some 
time  truth  and  goodness  were  not  yet.  We  must  rather 
say,  God  alone  is  the  Eternal  Being  and  absolute  Source 
of  all,  always  complete  in  the  perfection  of  his  personality ; 
and  therefore,  what  we  call  the  eternal  truths  are  only 
the  eternal  modes  of  God's  own  actual  activity 

v 

Two  supplementary  but  vital  considerations  need 
emphasis  in  concluding  our  philosophical  approach  to  a 
Christian  view  of  God  and  the  world. 

1.  One  of  these  considerations  is  to  be  found  in  the 
suggestion  that  one's  own  self  is  the  best  hey  one  has  to 
the  understanding  of  the  universe .  For  man  is,  after  all, 
in  a  very  real  sense  both  microcosmus  and  microtheos — 

68  Cf.  King,  Theology  and  the  Social  Consciousness ,  pp.  212  ff. 


The  Philosophical  Approach  129 

the  world  in  little  and  God  in  little — and  therefore  the 
best  key  to  the  understanding  of  both  the  universe  and 
God.  For  one’s  own  self  is  the  only  bit  of  reality  we  can 
know  from  within,  and  hence  know  best,  and  becomes 
thence  naturally  our  one  best  key  to  the  understanding 
of  the  world  both  of  nature  and  of  human  nature.  Lotze 
is  very  emphatic  in  making  the  whole  man  in  the  entire 
range  of  his  experience  the  key  to  reality,  in  this  signifi¬ 
cant  passage :  39  “The  nature  of  things  does  not  consist 
in  thoughts,  and  thinking  is  not  able  to  grasp  it ;  yet 
perhaps  the  whole  mind  experiences  in  other  forms  of  its 
action  and  passion  the  essential  meaning  of  all  being  and 
action,  thought  subsequently  serving  it  as  an  instrument 
by  which  that  which  is  thus  experienced  is  brought  into 
the  connection  which  its  nature  requires,  and  is  experi¬ 
enced  in  more  intensity  in  proportion  as  the  mind  is 
master  of  this  connection.” 

This  principle  of  ourselves  as  the  key  to  the  under¬ 
standing  of  the  world  means  particularly,  of  course,  that 
what  we  inevitably  recognize  as  the  highest  in  us  must  he 
taken  as  the  best  key  we  have  to  the  understanding  of 
God .  If  we  are  to  have  any  adequate  conception  of  God 
at  all,  it  is  plain  that  we  cannot  conceive  him  as  less  than 
the  best  in  our  finite  selves.  While,  therefore,  we  shall 
not  ascribe  to  God  the  limitations  of  our  finite  personali¬ 
ties,  we  shall  be  certain  at  least  that  he  is  not  less  than 
personal.  And  as  we  must  believe  that  in  us  will  is  more 
than  power,  and  love  more  than  will,  so  we  shall  be  sure 
that  the  highest  in  God  cannot  be  less  than  that  love 
which  is  highest  in  us. 

It  is  a  similar  line  of  thought  that  leads  the  modern 
philosopher  and  theologian  to  interpret  essence  no  longer 

in  terms  of  substance  or  stuff,  but  in  terms  of  purpose,  as 
*9  Microcosmus,  Vol.  II,  pp.  359-360. 


130 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

we  know  it  in  ourselves.  And  this  principle  of  the  teleo¬ 
logical  view  of  essence  has  important  bearings  upon  our 
conception  of  God  and  of  Christ,  as  well  as  upon  our 
conception  of  our  own  significance. 

2.  The  remaining  philosophical  consideration  needing 
special  emphasis  in  reaching  a  Christian  philosophy  of 
life  is  that  of  a  purposed  seeming  unreality  of  the  spiri¬ 
tual  life,  as  I  have  elsewhere  pointed  out.40  For  this 
seeming  unreality  there  are  undoubtedly  certain  plain 
removable  causes  in  various  kinds  of  misconceptions  and 
in  failure  to  fulfil  necessary  conditions ;  but  there  are  also 
equally  plain  unremovable  causes,  due  first  of  all  to  cer¬ 
tain  definite  limitations  of  our  natures,  but  especially  due 
to  what  may  be  called  a  purposed  seeming  unreality  on 
the  part  of  God ,  to  insure  respect  for  human  personality. 
This  explanation  of  the  seeming  unreality  of  the  spiritual 
life  began  with  Kant  and  is  very  important  as  throwing 
light  on  many  questions  difficult  for  religious  faith.  The 
principle,  for  example,  throws  a  great  new  light  on  the 
whole  dark  problem  of  evil — our  greatest  natural  obstacle 
to  a  satisfying  religious  faith.  As  I  have  previously  said : 
Seeing  how  much  is  at  stake  in  this  reverent  guarding,  at 
any  cost,  of  our  moral  initiative  and  of  our  individuality, 
we  learn  not  to  expect  God  to  interfere,  even  when  great 
evils  threaten.  The  greatest  evil,  after  all,  would  be  that 
the  conditions  of  genuine  character  should  fail.  We 
come  even  to  rejoice  that  we  live,  in  this  time  of  our  pre¬ 
liminary  training,  in  a  world  in  which  the  rewards  of 
virtue  do  not  seem  to  follow  either  immediately  or  cer¬ 
tainly.  The  natural  and  inevitable  doubt  which  underlies 
for  every  man  “the  problem  of  evil”  becomes,  in  the  light 

40  The  Seeming  Unreality  of  the  Spiritual  Life,  especially  pp.  141- 
165. 


The  Philosophical  Approach  131 

of  this  far-reaching  principle  of  reverence  for  personality, 
itself  a  cause  of  thanksgiving ;  for  it  insures  that  our 
righteous  choices  shall  not  be  selfishly  motived.  We  are 
glad  that  the  genuinely  unselfish  choice  seems  so  often  to 
cut  right  athwart  our  own  interests ;  for  it  means  that  our 
wills  are  not  over-ridden.  The  very  existence  of  the 
problem  of  evil  makes  possible  our  belief  in  the  genuine¬ 
ness  of  the  character  of  ourselves  and  of  others.  It  is  a 
heavy  price  that  is  thus  paid,  no  doubt ;  but  it  is  not  too 
heavy  for  the  priceless  interests  so  guarded.  We  have  to 
recognize  on  the  part  of  God,  then,  something  like  a  really 
purposed  obscuring  of  the  spiritual  world.  The  seemijg- 
unreality  of  the  spiritual  life  is  a  chief  part  of  our  moral 
and  religious  training. 

If  these  philosophical  view-points  now  reviewed,  with 
their  emphasis  on  seeing  life  whole,  are  justified,  we  can 
get  all  the  unity  necessary  in  our  view  of  the  world,  and 
religion  will  have  ample  room  for  existence  and  growth. 
Religion,  indeed,  becomes  the  natural  culmination  of  our 
best  thinking  along  many  lines. 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  BIBLICAL.  AND  CHRISTIAN  APPROACH 

In  facing  the  whole  problem  of  a  Christian  philosophy 
o\  life,  it  is  impossible  to  avoid  careful  consideration  of 
i\^  Biblical  and  Christian  approach;  for  Christianity  is 
uo  mere  philosophical  speculation,  but  a  definitely  histori¬ 
cal  religion,  using  as  a  part  of  its  literature  the  Old  Tes¬ 
tament  Scriptures,  and  building  preeminently  on  the  life 
and  teaching  of  Christ.  We  need  not  seek  in  any  way  or 
degree  to  evade  consideration  of  these  historical  relations 
of  Christianity.  Indeed,  this  historical  basis  may  well 
become  an  element  of  great  strength. 

At  the  same  time  the  relation  of  Christian  faith  to  the 
Scriptures  involves  some  difficult  problems,  greatly  need¬ 
ing  clear  solution.  It  is  particularly  true  that  questions 
of  real  difficulty  for  very  many  have  naturally  arisen  from 
false  conceptions  of  the  Bible,  because  the  facts  of  modern 
science  could  in  many  cases  not  be  harmonized  with  the 
Biblical  statements.  One  can  only  say,  as  honestly  as  he 
may,  how  these  questions  best  come  to  him. 

In  the  light  of  the  long  history  of  conflict  between  reli¬ 
gion  and  science,  it  is  highly  important  to  see  with 
President  McGifFert 1  that  “in  all  these  matters  the 
readjustment  might  have  taken  place  naturally  and  with¬ 
out  harm  to  anybody,  had  it  not  been  for  the  notion  that 
the  Bible  is  an  infallible  authority  upon  all  subjects, 

1  The  Rise  of  Modern  Religious  Ideas ,  p.  33. 

I32 


The  Biblical  and  Christian  Approach  133 

taken  together  with  the  fact  that  like  most  other  ancient 
documents  it  represents  a  world-view  which  the  new  scien¬ 
tific  discoveries  were  showing  erroneous  at  one  point  after 
another.” 

Thoughtful  Christians,  therefore,  are  forced  to  con¬ 
sider  what  view  they  are  to  take  of  the  Bible,  if  they  are  to 
keep  an  open  mind  toward  growing  scientific  knowledge 
on  the  one  hand,  and  toward  an  equally  honest  study  of 
the  Bible  on  the  other  hand. 

The  difficulties  to  be  met  really  need  just  two  things  for 
their  solution.  In  the  first  place,  it  needs  to  be  seen,  as 
has  already  been  pointed  out,  that  all  questions  of  science 
strictly  interpreted  are  questions  of  process,  and  at  bot¬ 
tom  cannot  conflict  with  the  questions  of  ideal  interpreta¬ 
tion  raised  by  religion;  and  that  a  careful  study  of  the 
established  facts  of  evolution  shows  that  there  is  no  diffi¬ 
culty  in  a  theistic  interpretation  of  the  evolution  theory. 
We  need  not  return  to  these  aspects  of  the  relation  of 
science  and  religion. 

In  the  second  place,  if  Christian  people  are  ever  to  avoid 
the  feeling  of  constant  conflict  between  science  and  the 
Scriptures,  there  is  need  to  go  to  the  bottom  as  to  what 
it  is  to  be  a  Christian,  and  so  what  a  Christian  use  of  the 
Bible  is. 

i 

What  then  is  it  to  be  a  Christian?  To  that  question,  I 
suppose,  the  simplest  and  at  the  same  time  the  funda¬ 
mental  answer  is :  a  Christian  man  is  a  man  who  means 
first  and  foremost  to  be  a  disciple  of  Christ.  Why  does 
a  man  take  that  position?  That  is,  why  do  Christian 
people  call  themselves  Christian  at  all?  Simply  because 
they  believe  that  Christ  is  truly  the  supreme  revelation  of 
God  and  of  the  highest  life  open  to  men;  that  is,  that 


134s 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

they  can  get  more  light  and  help  from  Christ  than  from 
any  other.  The  Christian  man  believes  that  the  great 
outstanding  claims  of  Christ  upon  the  love  and  loyalty  of 
men,  as  I  have  elsewhere  said,2  are  these:  that  in  him  we 
have  the  best  life,  the  best  ideals  and  standards,  the  best 
insight  into  the  laws  of  life,  the  best  convictions,  the  best 
hopes,  the  best  dynamic  for  character,  the  surest  revealer 
of  God,  and  the  greatest  persuasive  of  the  love  of  God; 
and,  therefore,  “the  most  precious  fact  in  history,  the 
most  precious  fact  our  life  contains.”  The  Christian  man 
thus  counts  Christ  as  veritable  Lord  of  his  life.  For  it  is 
the  simple  truth  to  say  that  in  all  the  higher  ranges  of 
his  life  he  literally  lives  by  Christ,  for  his  highest  ideals, 
insights,  convictions,  motives,  faiths  and  hopes  he  owes 
to  Christ. 

The  Christian  man,  now,  with  this  conception  of  Christ 
is  brought  face  to  face  with  the  Bible, — the  historical 
Scriptures  of  his  religion, — and  confronts  its  challenge: 
Are  you  in  dead  earnest — as  a  Christian  must  be — with 
the  Lordship  of  Christ  P  If  you  are,  then  you  must  assert 
his  supremacy  in  the  Bible — great  as  the  Bible  is — as  well 
as  out  of  it.  You  will  not  put  all  the  rest  of  the  Bible, 
Old  Testament  and  New  Testament  alike,  on  a  level  with 
him;  but  you  will  rather  insist  that  all  else  in  the  Bible 
must  be  tested  by  him — by  his  spirit.  And  only  that 
which  bears  that  test  is  in  the  highest  sense  Christian, 
and  to  be  received  by  you  as  such.  This  is  the  Christian 
use  of  the  Bible ,  and  there  is  no  other,  just  because  it 
alone  gives  Christ  his  supreme  place.  And  this  Christian 
use  of  the  Bible  brings  a  great  emancipation  both  to 
Christian  living  and  to  Christian  thinking.  One  is  no 
longer  confused  and  hindered  by  the  imperfect  approaches 
to  the  spirit  of  Christ  found  in  many  parts  of  the  Bible. 

*  Fundamental  Questions ,  p.  107. 


The  Biblical  and  Christian  Approach  135 

He  feels  no  obligation  to  defend  anything  in  the  Bible 
which  is  unworthy  of  the  spirit  of  Christ  or  manifestly 
not  true;  for  the  obligation  to  be  true  to  the  truth  is  a 
part  of  essential  loyalty  to  Christ. 

Now  all  this  has  nothing  primarily  to  do  with  scientific 
theories  of  any  hind.  There  is  nothing  in  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  denying  a  theistic  interpretation  of  evolution.  He 
is  in  truth  not  dealing  with  that  sort  of  question  at  all — 
not  with  astronomy  or  physics  or  chemistry  or  biology, 
but  only  with  religion,  with  a  man’s  highest  relations  to 
God  and  men.  On  the  other  hand,  Christ’s  teaching  fits 
well  enough  into  the  idea  of  evolution,  for  example  in  the 
parables  of  the  kingdom.  As  others,  and  especially 
Romanes,  have  suggested,  Jesus’  teaching  is  almost  as 
remarkable  for  what  it  does  not  say  as  for  what  it  does 
say.  His  spiritual  insight,  sanity,  and  balance  keep  him 
from  mixing  the  questions  with  which  he  deals  with  other 
questions  of  a  very  different  sort.  One  might  leave  the 
matter  right  there. 

But  the  very  interest  which  the  Christian  man  has  in 
Christ  and  in  his  teaching  well-nigh  compels  him  to  under¬ 
take  a  genetic  understanding  of  Christ  and  Christianity, 
— such  as  can  be  obtained  most  naturally  through  the 
Old  Testament.  And  that  means  that  he  can  hardly  use 
wisely  and  to  most  profit  the  Scriptures  of  his  religion, 
including  the  Old  Testament,  except  by  a  thorough  criti- 
cali  literary  and  historical  study  of  the  entire  Bible , — 
what  our  time  has  called  higher  criticism.  The  emphat¬ 
ically  Christian  use  of  the  Bible  thus  itself  leads  to  its 
critical  study.  There  is  imperative  need  of  a  very  honest 
application  to  the  Bible  of  the  principles  of  historical  and 
literary  criticism.  The  difficulty  for  Christian  believers, 
at  this  point,  has  almost  wholly  come,  as  has  been  said, 
from  the  notion  that  the  Bible  is  an  infallible  authority 


136 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

upon  all  subjects,  and  from  the  fact  that  many  have  been 
making  claims  for  the  Bible  that  the  Bible  does  not  make 
for  itself,  and  so  have  been  rendering  it  impossible  for  the 
Bible  to  give  the  priceless  help  that  it  may  readily  give. 
It  is  highly  important,  therefore,  to  see  the  full  meaning 
and  bearing,  for  the  Bible,  of  what  is  called  “higher 
criticism.” 

Higher  criticism  3  may  be  defined  as  a  careful  historical 
and  literary  study  of  the  book  to  determine  its  unity,  age, 
authorship,  literary  form,  and  reliability.  The  higher 
criticism  of  a  book  is  thus,  in  the  main,  simply  a  pains¬ 
taking  study  of  the  book  itself,  to  get  at  the  facts  about 
it.  The  inquiry  in  its  entirety  is  evidently  wholly  legiti¬ 
mate  and  ought  to  be  of  value  when  applied  to  the 
books  of  the  Bible  as  well  as  to  any  other  ancient  book. 
In  its  purity,  then,  it  is  to  be  noted,  the  higher  criticism 
of  the  Old  Testament,  for  example,  is  simply  an  honest 
inductive  study  of  the  facts  about  the  historical  revelation 
of  God  in  order  to  determine,  just  as  in  a  truly  scientific 
study  of  nature,  how  God  actually  did  proceed,  not 
how  he  must  have  proceeded.  Every  Christian  ought  to 
desire  to  know  just  that.  To  such  an  inductive  study, 
therefore,  however  thorough,  no  reasonable  objection  can 
be  made.  There  is,  however,  one  caution  voiced  by  Pro¬ 
fessor  E.  F.  Scott,  whose  liberality  will  not  be  questioned,4 
which  deserves  careful  heeding :  “As  we  read  not  a  few  of 
the  more  recent  books  on  the  origins  of  Christianity  we 
cannot  but  feel  that  the  authors  have  lost  sight  of  the 
result  in  their  occupation  with  the  process.  They  have 
much  to  say  about  sources  and  influences,  about  all  the 
different  phases  of  the  development,  but  with  the  thing 
that  developed  they  do  not  concern  themselves.” 

*Cf.  King,  Be  construction  in  Theology,  Chap.  VIII,  pp.  109  ff. 

4 The  New  Testament  Today,  p.  48. 


The  Biblical  and  Christian  Approach 


137 


n 

1.  In  turning,  now,  to  some  of  the  present-day  obstacles 
to  a  Biblical  approach  to  a  Christian  philosophy  of  life , 
the  doctrine  that  the  Scriptures  are  inerrant  on  all  sub¬ 
jects  and  equally  authoritative  throughout,  must  be 
squarely  faced ;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  it  makes  impossible 
a  truly  Christian  view  of  God  and  his  relation  to  men. 

The  element  of  truth  in  this  general  position  is  the 
priceless  value  which  the  Scriptures  have  in  enabling  one 
to  share  in  the  most  significant  religious  experiences  of 
the  race  (for  it  may  truly  be  called  a  record  of  the 
preeminent  meetings  of  God  with  men),6  and  to  get  a 
genetic  historical  understanding  of  Christ  and  Christian¬ 
ity.  And  this  value  must  never  be  lost  sight  of. 

But  the  view  that  all  parts  of  the  Scriptures  are  equally 
inspired  and  authoritative  inevitably  involves,  in  particu¬ 
lar,  over-attention  to  the  Old  Testament ,  over-estimation 
of  the  Old  Testament,  and  over-influence  of  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment  on  our  life  and  thought.  Christian  thought  as  a 
whole  has  never  faced  that  fact.  From  the  beginning 
of  Christianity  men  have  tended  to  give  the  Old  Testament 
such  an  undue  place,  and  this  is  still  true  for  great 
multitudes,  and  leads  to  many  un-Christian  inferences. 
Dr.  W.  N.  Clarke  does  not  put  the  matter  too  strongly :  6 

The  Old  Testament  is  “sure  to  offer  more  than  its  rightful 
share.  It  is  the  larger  book.  It  is  more  pictorial  in  its  modes 
of  representation  than  its  companion.  It  is  more  anthropo¬ 
morphic,  and  more  given  to  expressing  truths  by  means  of 
institutions.  It  thus  excels  in  quick  suggestiveness.  .  .  . 
Moreover,  in  spite  of  all  its  lofty  passages,  the  Old  Testament 
is  less  spiritual  than  the  New,  and  therefore  less  exact- 

•King,  Reconstruction  in  Theology,  p.  156. 

9  The  Use  of  the  Scriptures  in  Theology,  pp.  13-14. 


138 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

ing.  .  .  .  In  a  word,  the  Old  Testament  is  such  a  book  in 
comparison  with  the  New  that  to  over-exalt  it  is  to  unspirit¬ 
ualize  theology.  And  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  has  been  over¬ 
exalted  far.  The  third  chapter  of  Genesis  has  been  more 
influential  upon  the  doctrine  of  sin  than  all  the  words  and 
attitude  of  Jesus.  The  book  of  Leviticus  has  done  more  to 
give  form  to  the  doctrine  of  salvation  than  any  single  book 
in  the  New  Testament.  Legalism  has  entered  theology 
through  the  open  door,  and  found  permanent  lodgment  in 
the  doctrine  of  the  atonement.” 


The  doctrine  of  the  inerrancy  of  Scripture,  moreover, 
takes  an  external  view  of  authority  in  the  spiritual  life,  in 
its  thought  of  the  Bible  as  equally  authoritative  through¬ 
out,  in  a  way  that  is  quite  contrary  to  the  whole  spirit 
of  Christ’s  life  and  teaching.  For  Christ’s  whole  desire 
is  to  bring  his  disciples  into  a  genuine  sharing  in  his 
own  spiritual  life— to  convictions,  ideals,  faiths  and  hopes 
veritably  born  in  their  own  experience  with  him, — not  to 
allow  them  to  rest  back  on  any  ancient  say-so. 

The  view  trifles,  too, — half  unconsciously  no  doubt — 
with  facts  and  with  the  sense  of  truth,  in  its  insistence  on 
putting  all  Scripture  on  a  level  and  on  affirming  the 
unity  of  all.  For  this  insistence — I  think  one  must  say 
— is  manifestly  not  based  on  truth,  and  only  the  exigen¬ 
cies  of  an  unwarranted  theory  force  it  on  men.  The 
fifth  chapter  of  Genesis  and  the  first  nine  chapters  of 
First  Chronicles,  for  example,  are  certainly  not  to  be 
put  on  a  level  with  the  twenty-third  Psalm  and  the  Ser¬ 
mon  on  the  Mount.  It  is  not  a  light  matter  thus  to  trifle 
with  the  facts — with  the  truth — for  that  is  a  training  in 
disingenuousness.  As  another  has  put  it,  “Truth,  which 
implies  reverence  for  fact,  and  even  for  what  may  seem 
trivial  fact,  is  part  of  the  very  being  of  God,  and  therefore 
any  cynical  or  easy-going  indifference  to  truth  is  itself 


The  Biblical  and  Christian  Approach  139 

.  an  obstacle  to  real  fellowship  with  Him.”  7  “Let  your 
yea  be  yea,  and  your  nay,  nay.” 

Moreover — what  supremely  concerns  the  Christian — 
the  view  of  an  equally  authoritative  Bible,  as  we  have  seen, 
denies  the  real  Lordship  of  Christ  in  the  Bible  by  putting 
all  Scripture  on  a  level  with  him.  My  complaint  is  not 
that  the  defenders  of  an  equally  authoritative  Bible  make 
too  much  of  Christ,  but  that  in  reality  they  make  far 
too  little.  Those  who  take  this  position  should  heed 
well  what  it  involves.  For  as  a  matter  of  fact,  by  this 
very  attitude  they  absolutely  fail  to  give  Christ  anything 
like  the  place  he  merits,  or  anything  like  so  large  a  place 
as  do  many  of  those  whom  they  criticize  for  denying  the 
divinity  of  Christ.  This  is  no  small  error.  It  is  time 
that  this  truth  was  pressed  earnestly  home  upon  all 
Christian  men  and  women,  for  this  doctrine  of  the  in¬ 
errancy  of  Scripture,  just  because  it  makes  all  Scripture 
equally  authoritative,  makes  it  impossible  to  give  Christ 
his  real  supremacy,  whether  in  the  Bible  or  out  of  it,  and 
is  therefore  fundamentally  un-Christian  in  the  highest 
sense. 

Positively,  then,  the  opposition  to  this  claim  for  the 
inerrancy  of  Scripture  and  all  that  goes  with  that  should 
mean  several  things.  First,  it  means  unhesitating  accept¬ 
ance  of  the  principles  of  the  historical  and  literary  criti¬ 
cism  of  the  Scriptures.  We  cannot  otherwise  use  the 
Scriptures  as  they  ought  to  be  used,  or  even  defend  them. 
A  professor  of  the  Bible  in  an  Indian  Christian  college 
told  me  that  in  his  Bible  classes  he  taught  Christian 
students  and  Hindu  students  separately,  for  he  could 
svot  answer  the  questions  raised  by  the  Hindu  students 
except  on  the  basis  of  historical  and  literary  criticism, 
and  this  critical  position  he  did  not  feel  at  liberty  to  take 
1  The  Spirit,  edited  by  Streeter,  p.  166. 


140 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

in  teaching  the  Christian  students,  on  account  of  the  op¬ 
position  of  other  members  of  the  faculty.  In  the  second 
place,  this  should  mean  discriminating  recognition  of  the 
limitations  of  the  Old  Testament.  One  of  the  great  gains 
of  the  newer  view  of  the  Scriptures  is  that  it  requires 
discrimination  in  their  use ;  it  means  a  more  genuinely 
spiritual  method  in  spiritual  things ;  for,  as  Drummond 
says,  “Truth  never  becomes  truth  until  it  has  been 
earned.”  The  setting  aside  of  the  doctrine  of  the  in¬ 
errancy  of  the  Scripture  should  emphatically  mean,  as 
we  have  seen,  coming  to  a  new  and  clear  assertion  of 
the  Lordship  of  Christ  in  the  Bible  as  well  as  out 
of  it. 

The  rational  view  of  the  Scriptures  would  also  involve 
the  application  of  the  evolutionary  point  of  view,  though 
in  no  mechanical  fashion,  to  the  Scriptures  as  a  record 
of  the  growing  revelation  of  God  on  the  one  hand,  and 
of  man’s  growing  response  to  that  revelation  on  the  other. 
For  it  is  impossible  to  put  all  the  different  stages  of 
revelation  in  the  Old  Testament  on  a  level  or  to  assert 
that  the  order  of  time  is  in  all  cases  the  order  of  progress. 
And  such  a  view  of  Scripture  implies  especially  perceiving 
the  progressive  apologetic  within  the  New  Testament  itself 
with  its  continuing  help.  As  Scott  points  out  in  his 
Apologetic  of  the  New  Testament ,  we  have  been  slow  to 
see  the  great  value,  for  example  of  the  Johannine  apol¬ 
ogetic  and  the  help  of  its  later  date.  The  victory  over 
Gnosticism,  in  Scott’s  words,  “has  been  described  as  the 
victory  of  sober  reason  over  wild  irresponsible  speculation ; 
but  it  was  much  more.  It  ensured  that  Christianity 
should  continue  as  an  ethical  religion,  appealing  to  all 
mankind,  and  not  as  an  esoteric  philosophy.  It  ensured 
also  that  through  all  its  future  developments  the  church 
should  be  anchored  to  its  historical  origins  in  the  life 


The  Biblical  and  Christian  Approach  141 

and  death  of  Jesus  Christ.” 8  This  makes  the  New 
Testament  Christianity  emphatically  ethical,  universal, 
historical,  and  Christian.  The  Fourth  Gospel  “has  per¬ 
ceived  that  Christianity  is  ultimately  bound  up  with 
Christ  himself — not  with  any  work  accomplished  by  Him, 
but  with  His  own  Person.”  9 

This  historical  critical  study  of  the  Scriptures  gives  an 
emancipated  theology,  and  has  still  much  of  fruitful  sug¬ 
gestion  for  theology.  For  example,  light  from  the  extra- 
canonical  apocalyptic  writings  helps  to  relieve  the  tradi¬ 
tional  Christian  eschatology ,  as  Rev.  C.  W.  Emmet  points 
out  in  his  essay  on  The  Bible  and  Hell .10 

He  defines  the  traditional  view  of  hell  as  “any  state  of 
punishment,  whether  bodily  or  spiritual,  from  which  there  is 
no  longer  any  prospect  of  the  soul  deriving  any  benefit,  and 
in  which  it  suffers  without  hope  for  itself  or  profit  to  others. 
Our  strongest  ground  for  the  belief  in  immortality  at  all  is 
our  trust  in  the  infinite  Love  of  God  and  our  conviction  that 
in  His  Universe  goodness  must  ultimately  prevail ;  but  the  doc¬ 
trine  that  through  all  eternity  there  will  continue  to  exist 
individuals  suffering  acutely  in  useless  and  hopeless  agony 
is  too  cruel  and  too  irrational  to  be  compatible  with  that 
belief.  .  .  .  The  traditional  Christian  teaching  in  this  matter 
is  very  generally  supposed  to  rest  directly  on  the  teaching 
of  the  Bible  as  a  whole  and  of  the  New  Testament  in  par¬ 
ticular.  .  .  .  It  is  the  contention  of  this  paper  that  this 
supposition  is  wholly  erroneous.  The  recovery,  during  recent 
years,  of  a  large  number  of  lost  Jewish  apocalyptic  writings 
has  thrown  an  entirely  new  light  on  the  exact  nature  of  the 
problem  contemplated,  on  the  exact  meaning  of  the  terms 
employed,  and  on  the  history  and  origin  of  many  of  the  ideas 
on  this  subject  found  in  the  Biblical  writers.  The  net  result 
of  modern  Biblical  scholarship,  with  its  application  of  the 
historical  method  commonly  known  as  the  higher  criticism, 

*  Op.  cit.,  pp.  180-181. 

•  Scott,  op.  cit.,  p.  207. 

19  Immortality,  edited  by  Streeter,  pp.  170-172,  212-213. 


142 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

combined  with  the  light  derived  from  these  new  sources,  is 
to  make  it  quite  clear  that  the  doctrine  of  hell  in  the  sense 
in  which  that  term  was  understood  by  our  great-grandfathers 
is  not  to  be  found  in  the  Bible  at  all.  The  Bible  teaches, 
indeed,  that  the  choice  between  right  and  wrong  action  is  one 
which  has  eternal  and  abiding  consequences.  It  is  emphati¬ 
cally  opposed  to  any  belief  that,  do  what  we  will,  it  will  make 
no  difference  in  the  long  run.  What  it  does  not  teach  is,  that 
in  the  last  and  final  result  of  things,  there  will  still  remain 
in  the  Universe  beings  suffering  acute  and  everlasting  torment 
in  permanent  rebellion  against  the  Divine  Will  and  forever 
rejecting  the  Divine  Love.” 

The  way  in  which  the  eschatological  question  has  so 
largely  dropped  out  of  theological  controversy  is  most 
significant.  For  more  or  less  consciously  that  fact  prob¬ 
ably  reflects  the  immovable  feeling  that  there  is  nothing 
in  the  teaching  and  revelation  of  Jesus  so  certain  as  his 
fundamental  conviction  of  the  infinite  love  of  God  as 
Father;  and  that  no  single  passages  or  particular  dif¬ 
ficulties  of  interpretation  can  set  aside  this  never-to-be- 
doubted  love  of  God.  And  no  view  of  the  future  life  which 
is  inconsistent  with  this  eternal  tireless  seeking  love  of 
God  can  be  regarded  as  finally  Christian.  Or,  as  Emmet 
says,  “It  is  our  belief  in  the  Fatherhood  and  love  of  God 
as  revealed  in  Christ  which  makes  the  idea  of  unending 
torment  strictly  intolerable.”  10a 

The  World  War  naturally  brought  into  the  foreground, 
especially  in  England,  another  eschatological  question — • 
the  question  of  prayer  for  the  dead.  And  one  may  well 
wonder  if  it  is  not  becoming  increasingly  doubtful  whether 
Protestantism  is  justified  in  its  complete  rejection  of 
such  prayer.  In  another’s  words,  “The  reaction  of  the 
Protestant  mind  against  mercenary  prayers  and  cere¬ 
monies  to  relieve  the  misery  of  the  souls  in  Purgatory 
10“  Op  cit.,  p.  013. 


143 


The  Biblical  and  Christian  Approach 

was  healthy.  But  with  this  came  in  another  supers  ti- 
tion,  that  it  was  wrong  to  pray  for  the  dead  or  to  believe 
in  their  fellowship  with  the  living.”  11 

2.  Another  obstacle  to  a  Biblical  approach  to  Chris¬ 
tian  life  and  thought  is  to  be  found  in  a  prevalent  extreme 
apocalypticism . 

There  is  an  undoubted  eschatological  element  in  Christ's 
own  teaching ,  and  there  ought  to  be  if  his  teaching  is  to 
really  meet  the  fundamental  needs  of  men.  This  escha¬ 
tological  element  is  to  be  found  in  the  first  place  in  the 
calm  assurance  which  Christ  has  and  gives  of  another 
life  of  fulness  and  of  value.  This  will  always  be  needed 
for  any  adequate  Christian  apologetic.  In  the  second 
place,  Jesus  recognizes  that  another  life  is  necessary  if 
we  are  to  be  able  to  keep  our  faith  in  the  justice  and 
love  of  God.  This  demand  for  justice  in  God  is  the  one 
great  redeeming  feature  of  the  apocalyptic  literature. 
As  Glover  puts  it : 12  “In  the  apocalyptic  books  we  have 
their  philosophy  of  history,  their  conviction  that  funda¬ 
mental  Justice  is  the  secret  of  the  universe,  that  present 
wrong  will  yet,  by  God’s  providence,  issue  somehow  in 
future  right.” 

The  most  of  the  rest  of  apocalypticism  should  be 
sloughed  off  as  simple  unwarranted  Jewish  survival.  Dr. 
Clarke’s  language  is  justified:13  “Visible  advent,  simul¬ 
taneous  resurrection,  assemblage  of  all  men  for  judg¬ 
ment,  millennial  reign  of  Christ  on  earth, — all  is  Jewish 
survival,  historically  discredited  by  the  work  of  Christ 
himself :  it  is  a  remainder  from  pre-Christian  life  and 
hope,  demonstrated  to  be  non-Christian  by  the  different 

“  Miss  Dougall,  Immortality,  p.  292. 

n  Jesus  in  the  Experience  of  Men,  p.  101. 

u  The  Use  of  the  Scriptures  in  Theology,  p.  108. 


144 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

course  of  Christian  history ;  wherefore  it  forms  no  part  of 
Christian  theology.” 

This  literalistic  premillennialism  is  contrary  to  the 
whole  spirit  of  the  teaching  of  Christ,  for  it  reveals  an 
essentially  atheistic  disbelief  in  spiritual  forces  and  re¬ 
pudiation  of  them,  yielding  thus  to  a  temptation  which 
Christ  himself  rejected  in  the  wilderness  struggle.  More¬ 
over,  this  literalistic  premillennialism  practically  sets 
aside  the  whole  social  aspect  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  and 
makes  meaningless  Christ’s  prayer,  “Thy  kingdom  come, 
thy  will  be  done  on  earth  .” 

3.  Another  obstacle  to  a  Biblical  approach  to  Christian 
life  and  thought  is  to  be  found  in  modern  spiritualism. 

Spiritualism  naturally  took  on  a  new  lease  of  life  during 
the  World  War,  but  has  been  singularly  disappointing  in 
its  contribution  to  the  religious  life.  Its  chief  value, 
so  far,  has  been  to  have  called  out  the  activity  of  the 
Society  for  Psychical  Research.  Professor  Leuba,  who  is 
sufficiently  skeptical  on  points  bearing  on  the  spiritual 
life,  seems  to  accept  the  evidence  for  something  like  telep¬ 
athy  as  adequate.  He  writes  of  psychical  research:  14 
“The  greatest  accomplishment  to  record  is  the  approxi¬ 
mate  demonstration  that,  under  circumstances  still  mostly 
unknown,  men  may  gain  knowledge  by  other  than  the 
usual  means,  perhaps  by  direct  communication  between 
brains  (telepathy)  at  practically  any  earthly  distance 
from  each  other.  This  dark  opening  is  indeed  portentous. 
It  may  at  any  time  lead  to  discoveries  which  will  dwarf  into 
insignificance  any  of  the  previous  achievements  of  science.” 
But  with  the  acceptance  of  something  like  telepathy,  it 
is  to  be  noticed,  a  very  large  part,  at  least,  of  all 
“spiritualistic”  phenomena  would  be  explained. 

u  Encyclopedia  of  Religion  and  Ethics,  article  “Psychical  Re¬ 
search.” 


I 


The  Biblical  amd  Christum  Approach  145 

A  fairly  sane  attitude  for  Christian  men  and  women 
not  expert  in  psychical  research  has  been  thus  phrased: 
“I  am  quite  sure  that  at  the  heart  of  the  universe  lie 
order  and  reason  and  health — that  God  is  the  God  of 
order  and  reason  and  health  in  all  human  affairs — and 
therefore  I  can,  with  a  light  heart,  leave  the  investigation 
of  alleged  spiritualistic  phenomena  to  expert  scientists ; 
I  am  quite  certain  that  whatever  turns  out  to  be  true  will 
also  prove  useful  to  man  and  honoring  to  God.” 15 
Dabbling  in  seances  is  dubious  business  for  those  not 
trained  in  critical  investigation. 

My  own  belief  is  that  anything  like  a  scientific  proof 
of  existence  after  death  would  be  of  very  doubtful  value 
to  religion.  We  chiefly  need  a  rational  faith  in  another 
life, — not  satisfaction  of  our  curiosity  concerning  all 
kinds  of  details  that  would  probably  now  mean  little 
to  us. 

Certain  general  considerations  warn  us  not  to  expect 
over-much  from  modern  spiritualism.  In  the  first  place, 
in  the  words  of  G.  R.  S.  Mead,  “In  the  demonstrations 
of  spiritualism  psychical  capacity  is  notoriously  unaccom¬ 
panied  with  intellectual  ability.”  In  the  second  place, 
spiritualism  seems  to  tend,  in  most  cases  at  least,  to  a 
distinct  lowering  of  the  tone  of  the  other  life.  Miss 
Underhill’s  words  are  hardly  too  strong:  “One  of  the 
most  remarkable  and  distressing  characteristics  of  spiri¬ 
tualism  is  the  thoroughly  unspiritual  tone  of  its  revela¬ 
tions.”  Moreover,  spiritualism  almost  completely  ignores 
ethical  values  and  seems  to  have  practically  no  ethical 
impiilse.  Here  again  Christ’s  principle  applies,  “By 
their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them.”  A  recent  critic  of  spiri¬ 
tualism  makes  the  interesting  suggestion  that  its  claims 
would  put  us  back  in  the  old  maze  of  verbal  inspiration; 

“ Immortality ,  p.  244, 


146 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

for  she  says:  “If  we  believe  that  by  these  methods  we 
obtain  messages  verbally  dictated  by  departed  souls,  we 
have  returned  to  a  belief  in  verbal  inspiration,  and  I 
wish  to  submit  that  all  the  difficulties  with  which  we  are 
familiar  in  believing  that  our  Scriptures  were  thus  in¬ 
spired  are  to  be  urged  against  any  belief  that  our  friends 
in  the  next  world  give  verbally  inspired  messages  to 
those  who  remain  in  the  flesh.”  16 

4.  Among  present-day  obstacles  to  a  Biblical  approach 
to  Christian  life  and  thought  I  fear  must  be  included 
also  Christian  Science. 

In  Christian  Science  we  have  one  of  the  most  anomalous 
phenomena  of  a  scientific  age,  and  we  need  to  have  in 
mind  the  appalling  assumptions  it  makes. 

In  the  first  place,  Christian  Science  denies  the  scientific 
facts  and  laws  of  the  world  and  repudiates  all  modern 
science,  through  which  the  conquest  of  material  forces 
has  come  to  pass.  There  is  really  no  place  for  a  scien¬ 
tifically  educated  man  in  Christian  Science.  It  has  not 
even  any  working  hypothesis  of  its  relation  to  science. 

Its  “glossary”  is  an  absolute  repudiation  of  any  pos¬ 
sible  rational  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures.  Nothing 
too  harsh  could  be  said  of  it  as  a  method  of  reaching 
the  truth  of  the  Bible.  It  thus  trifles  with  the  sense  of 
truth  and  with  all  possible  evidence  in  most  self-con¬ 
tradictory  fashion. 

One  of  the  most  appalling  facts  for  one  who  remembers 
Christ’s  emancipation  of  his  disciples  from  superstition 
and  fear  is  that  Mrs.  Eddy  brought  back  for  her  fol¬ 
lowers  belief  in  all  the  horrors  of  witchcraft  in  her  theory 
of  “malicious  animal  magnetism.”  She  lived  in  fear  of 
it  herself  and  put  others  in  fear  of  it.  Her  statement 

“Miss  Dougall,  Immortality,  p.  273. 


The  Biblical  and  Christian  Approach  147 

concerning  it  is  unusually  clear:  “If  the  right  mental 
practice  can  restore  health,  as  is  proven  beyond  a  ques¬ 
tion,  it  is  self-evident  that  a  mental  malpractice  can 
impair  the  health  of  those  ignorant  of  the  cause  and  how 
to  treat  it.”  17 

But  it  is  nevertheless  to  be  said  that  in  the  conviction 
of  healing ,  Christian  Science  has  undoubtedly  brought  to 
many  a  sense  of  the  reality  of  living  relation  to  God , — 
a  vital  religious  conviction.  And  though  Christian 
Science  has  terribly  encumbered  this  simple  religious  fact 
with  a  false  philosophy,  a  repudiation  of  science,  and  an 
impossible  interpretation  of  the  Bible,  it  has  still  brought 
to  men  a  sufficient  sense  of  the  positive  healing  power  of 
religious  faith  to  help  them  to  feel  their  way  into  some 
discernment  of  the  spiritual  conditions  of  health.  The 
way  this  has  come  about  with  such  new  sense  of  power 
and  reality  is  perhaps  indicated  by  Rev.  Harold  Anson 
in  his  essay  on  Prayer  as  Understanding . 18  He  believes 
that  to  many  people  with  an  inadequate  conception  of  God, 

“the  idea  comes  as  new  that,  in  worshipping  God,  we  are 
really  worshipping  Goodness,  Love,  Life,  Principle,  and  so 
on;  it  comes  as  a  new  strength  and  stay  in  life.  To  this 
newly  discovered  belief  ‘Christian  Science’  and  similar  re¬ 
ligious  movements  owe  much  of  their  influence  and  their  power 
of  regenerating  character.  Many  people  thus  attain  for  the 
first  time  something  of  the  calmness  and  balance  of  the  man 
of  science.  They  learn  to  believe  that  the  results  of  co¬ 
operation  with  God’s  purpose  are  as  certain  and  accurate  as 
the  demonstrations  of  the  laboratory.  .  .  .  Thus  the  idea 
of  God  as  the  abstract  active  principle  of  good  does,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  bring  to  many  in  our  own  generation  a  new 
steadfastness  in  disappointment,  and  a  confident  assurance 
in  the  search  after  God  which  they  did  not  possess  before.’’ 

1T  Science  and  Health,  13th  ed.,  p.  175. 

u  Concerning  Prayer,  pp.  94-95. 


148 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

Science  and  Healthy  the  Christian  Science  textbook,  is 
singularly  lacking  in  intellectual  and  spiritual  insight, 
and  the  Christian  church  as  a  whole  ought  to  be  able 
distinctly  to  outbid  Christian  Science  in  true  spiritual 
healing.  For,  as  another  has  put  it,  the  truly  Christian 
spiritual  healer  “is  seeking  for  a  re-constitution  of  the 
soul  more  profound  than  that  which  the  purely  psychical 
healer  is  seeking.”  19 

5.  Another  obstacle  to  a  Biblical  approach  to  a  Chris¬ 
tian  philosophy  of  life  is  to  be  found  in  a  false  type  of 
mysticism . 

A  new  wave  of  mysticism — partly  at  least  due  to  the 
World  War — seems  to  be  sweeping  over  the  world,  and 
with  such  a  movement  there  is  grave  need  of  some  sharp 
discriminations  between  a  true  and  a  false  mysticism. 
For  there  are  some  highly  important  considerations  to  be 
taken  into  account  when  one  is  trying  to  think  his  way 
through  mysticism.20 

The  dangers  of  mysticism  seem  to  me  to  be  these:  the 
tendency  to  make  simple  emotion  the  supreme  test  of 
the  religious  state;  the  tendency  toward  mere  subjectiv¬ 
ism  ;  the  tendency,  therefore,  to  underestimate  the  histor¬ 
ical;  a  tendency  toward  vagueness,  for  mysticism  nat¬ 
urally  lacks  positive  content ;  the  tendency  toward 
Pantheism,  underrating  the  personality  both  of  God  and 
of  man;  and  the  tendency  to  extravagant  symbolism. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  justifiable  elements  in  mysti¬ 
cism  at  its  best  may  be  said  to  include:  the  insistence  on 
the  legitimate  place  of  feeling  in  religion  as  a  real  and 
vital  experience;  the  emphasis  on  one’s  own  conviction 
and  faith ;  the  real  difficulty  of  expressing  the  full  meaning 

M  Concerning  Prayer ,  p.  349. 

30  Cf.  King,  Theology  and  the  Social  Consciousness,  Chs.  V  and  VI. 


The  Biblical  and  Christian  Approach  149 

of  the  religious  experience;  the  demand  for  a  complete 
ethical  surrender  to  God;  the  faith  in  the  real  unity  and 
worth  of  the  world  in  God. 

Perhaps  the  best  definition  of  what  I  have  called  false 
mysticism  is  this  of  Herrmann’s : 21  “When  the  influ¬ 
ence  of  God  upon  the  soul  is  sought  and  found  solely  in 
an  inward  experience  of  the  individual,  that  is  in  an 
excitement  of  the  emotions  taken,  with  no  further  ques¬ 
tion,  as  evidence  that  the  soul  is  possessed  by  God ;  with¬ 
out,  at  the  same  time,  anything  external  to  the  soul  being 
consciously  and  clearly  perceived  and  firmly  grasped,  or 
the  positive  contents  of  any  soul-dominating  idea  giving 
rise  to  thoughts  that  elevate  the  spiritual  life,  then  that 
is  the  piety  of  mysticism.  He  who  seeks  in  this  wise  that 
for  the  sake  of  which  he  is  ready  to  abandon  all  beside, 
has  stepped  beyond  the  pale  of  truly  Christian  piety. 
For  he  leaves  Christ  and  Christ’s  Kingdom  altogether 
behind  him  when  he  enters  that  sphere  of  experience 
which  seems  to  him  to  be  the  highest.”  The  marks  of  a 
false  mysticism,  then,  for  Herrmann,  are:  that  it  is  purely 
subjective;  that  it  is  merely  emotional  and  unethical; 
that  hence  it  has  no  clear  object,  and  is  abstract,  un- 
rational,  unhistorical,  and  so  un-Christian. 

The  greatest  single  danger  of  mysticism  is  probably 
the  acceptance  of  the  Neoplatonic  theory,  that  the  soul, 
in  Nash’s  words,  “must  pass  into  a  state  that  is  half  a 
swoon  and  half  an  ecstasy  before  it  can  truly  know  God.” 
Now  it  must  be  squarely  faced  that  this  half-swoon  and 
half-ecstasy,  which  both  the  Indian  and  Neoplatonic  mys¬ 
ticism  attain,  may  be  produced  by  various  forms  of  self¬ 
hypnotism,  often  markedly  sexual,  and  even  through  ni¬ 
trous  oxide  gas  intoxication.  James  calls  attention  to  the 

“  The  Communion  of  the  Christian  with  God,  2nd  English  ed.,  pp. 
22-23. 


150 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

fact  that  nitrous  oxide  gas  gives  “the  immense  emotional 
sense  of  reconciliation.”  The  vital  question,  then,  is  not 
that  of  the  reality  of  the  experiences,  but  that  of  the  real 
cause  and  significance  of  the  experiences,  and  the  only  pos¬ 
sible  test  of  this  is  rational  and  ethical.  Once  again  one 
must  apply  Paul’s  test  of  “the  fruit  of  the  Spirit.” 

There  is  grave  danger,  therefore,  in  much  modern  as 
well  as  ancient  mysticism,  of  substituting  an  essentially 
unreligious  and  unmoral  experience  for  a  true  Christian 
communion  with  God.  Much  of  this  mysticism  has  prac¬ 
tically  no  use  for  the  historical  Christ,  except  as  a  ladder 
by  which  the  mystical  experience  may  be  reached.  We 
do  well,  therefore,  to  call  our  thought  back  to  New  Testa¬ 
ment  testimony  upon  this  point. 

For  example,  Glover,22  bears  truthful  testimony,  I 
think,  when  he  says : 

“Remark,  at  any  rate,  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  that  there 
is  no  mysticism  of  the  type  so  much  studied  today.  There 
is  nothing  in  the  least  ‘psychopathic’  about  him,  nothing  ab¬ 
normal — no  mystical  vision  of  God,  no  mystical  absorption 
in  God,  no  mystical  union  with  God,  no  abstraction,  nothing 
that  is  the  mark  of  the  professed  mystic.  Yet  he  speaks  freely 
of  ‘seeing  God’;  he  lives  a  life  of  the  closest  union  with  God; 
and  God  is  in  all  his  thoughts.  A  phrase  like  that  of  Clement 
of  Alexandria,  ‘deifying  into  apathy  we  become  monadic,’ 
is  seas  away  from  anything  we  find  in  the  speech  of  Jesus. 
That  is  not  the  way  he  preaches  God.  He  is  far  more 
natural ;  and  that  his  followers  accepted  this  naturalness,  and 
drew  him  so,  and  gave  his  teaching  as  he  gave  it,  is  a  fresh 
pledge  of  the  truthfulness  of  the  Gospels.” 

And  even  a  writer  so  sympathetic  with  mysticism  as 
Professor  Rufus  Jones  can  say:23 

29  The  Jesus  of  History,  p.  89. 

28  Concerning  Prayer,  p.  115. 


The  ISihlical  and  Christian  Approach  151 

“The  well-marked,  sharply  defined  ‘mystic  way’  which 
many  mystics  of  the  past  have  taken  is  esoteric  and  more  or 
less  artificial,  not  grounded  in  the  inherent  nature  of  the  soul 
and  not  a  universal  highway  for  the  whole  race  of  the  saved, 
though  even  here  the  experience  of  mystics,  as  a  typical  pil¬ 
grim’s  progress,  may  be  and  often  is  illuminating.  The  ‘lad¬ 
ders’  of  mystical  ascent  must  be  treated  as  parables  of  the 
way  upward  rather  than  as  literal  rungs  and  necessary  stages 
of  religious  experience,  and  one  feels  how  artificial  they  are 
when  an  attempt  is  made  to  fit  the  mighty  life-experiences 
of  Christ  and  of  St.  Paul  and  of  the  author  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  into  these  mystical  model-forms  and  to  make  them 
follow  the  ‘purgative,’  the  ‘illuminative’  and  the  ‘unitive’ 
stages.” 

In  the  case  of  Christ,  as  Emmet  says,24  “there  is  a  strik¬ 
ing  absence  of  any  claim  to  peculiar  or  abnormal  modes 
of  intercourse;  we  hear  but  little  of  ecstatic  vision  or 
mystic  absorption.  What  Christ  experienced  was  a  close 
and  unsullied  union  with  His  Father  through  the  normal 
means  which  are  open  to  every  child  of  God.” 

m 

Turning  now  from  these  present-day  obstacles  to  a 
Biblical  approach  to  Christian  life  and  thought,  to  a  pos¬ 
itive  setting  forth  of  the  Christian  way  of  seeing  life  whole , 
I  know  no  such  significant  illustration  of  the  determined 
seeing  life  steadily  and  seeing  it  whole  as  is  found  in 
Christ’s  answers  to  the  wilderness  temptations.  Those 
temptations,  on  the  eve  of  his  public  ministry,  graphically 
pictured,  gathered  about  the  questions  of  the  nature  of 
his  kingdom  and  the  ways  in  which  it  was  to  be  built  up. 
The  temptation  to  command  the  stones  to  be  made  bread, 
was  the  temptation  to  make  the  satisfaction  of  men’s 


84  The  Spirit ,  p.  217. 


152 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

physical  wants  the  primary  way  to  the  upbuilding  of  his 
kingdom.  The  temptation  to  cast  himself  down  from  the 
pinnacle  of  the  temple  was  the  temptation  to  sweep  men 
into  his  kingdom  by  dazzling  marvels.  The  temptation 
of  the  vision  of  “all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  and  the 
glory  of  them”  was  the  temptation  to  ruthless  seizure 
of  all  power,  as  that  to  which  he  was  entitled, — the  funda¬ 
mental  mistake  of  making  means  into  ends.  The  kingdom 
by  bread  alone,  the  kingdom  by  marvel  alone,  the  king¬ 
dom  by  power,  by  making  means  into  ends, — all  these  he 
set  aside.  For  Christ  was  fighting  his  way  through  to 
the  fundamental  principles  of  his  kingdom.  And  in  this 
great  crisis  of  his  life  he  illustrates  and  enforces  the 
necessary  wholeness  of  his  kingdom ,  as  against  the  three¬ 
fold  temptations  to  a  fragmentary  and  superficial  one¬ 
sidedness. 

His  kingdom  is  to  be  no  makeshift,  no  trying  to  satisfy 
men  with  partial  goods,  no  stopping  on  the  surface,  and 
no  despising  of  any  man’s  nature.  He  must  do  justice 
to  the  whole  man  as  God  has  created  him. 

1.  Christ’s  answer  to  the  first  temptation  is  thus  im¬ 
plicit  in  his  reply  to  the  others  also :  “ Man  shall  not  live 

hy  bread  alone ,  but  by  every  word  that  proceedeth  out 
of  the  mouth  of  God.”  It  is  a  broad  illuminating  prin¬ 
ciple  and  points  to  an  open  road. 

Keenly  sensitive  to  the  bodily  wants  of  men  and  to  the 
basic  nature  of  those  wants,  Christ  raises  the  question 
whether  the  satisfaction  of  those  bodily  wants  is  the 
primary  way  to  the  victory  of  his  kingdom.  Christ  felt 
here  the  frequent  temptation  of  the  modern  social  worker. 
He  saw  clearly  that  the  need  of  bread  is  a  real  need. 
The  body  is  a  genuine  part  of  the  nature  of  man.  Christ 
had  no  quarrel  with  the  modern  realist  in  this.  The  sat- 


The  Biblical  and  Christian  Approach  158 

isfaction  of  man’s  fundamental  hungers  is  necessary  both 
to  the  life  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race. 

Upon  the  hunger  for  food  are  built  self-defense,  in 
victory  over  the  hardships  and  obstacles  of  life;  self- 
support,  through  the  dignity  of  work  in  which  a  man 
proves  himself  no  parasite ;  and  hence  the  self-respect  of  a 
true  man,  who  has  responded  to  the  ancient  prophetic 
challenge,  “Son  of  man,  stand  upon  thy  feet  and  I  will 
speak  to  thee.” 

Upon  the  fact  of  sex  have  been  built  up  through 
human  history  the  beauty  and  glory  of  romantic  love  as 
western  civilization  has  come  to  see  it;  the  deep  meaning 
and  sacredness  of  family  ties ;  the  priceless  values  of  the 
Christian  home  at  its  best. 

In  the  train  of  the  urge  for  material  comfort  has  come, 
too,  much  of  the  conquest  of  wretchedness  and  want  and 
suffering  and  disease,  and  much,  too,  of  the  positive 
achievements  of  civilization. 

Moreover,  Christ  saw  clearly  that  his  doctrine  was 
to  be  no  asceticism.  He  had  none  of  the  celibate’s  con¬ 
tempt  for  the  body.  On  the  contrary,  he  ministered  joy¬ 
fully  and  continually  to  the  bodies  of  men  as  well  as  to 
their  spiritual  natures. 

Man  doth  live  by  bread,  then,  but  not  by  bread  alone, — 
not  alone  by  the  satisfaction  of  physical  hungers.  Man 
is  made  on  so  large  a  plan  that  he  may  not  think  simply 
of  physical  hungers.  Imagination  and  reason  and 
ethical  ambition  and  the  sense  of  beauty  have  their  hun¬ 
gers,  too ;  and  man  may  not  abuse  this  trust  of  the  whole 
of  his  nature,  just  as  he  must  not  abuse  the  trust  of  his 
physical  nature. 

Our  generation  needs  this  wholesome  breadth  of  Christ’s, 
as  against  a  narrow,  one-sided  emphasis  in  much  of  our 
current  fiction,  upon  sex,  and  upon  a  frank,  definitely 


154 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

anti-Christian  paganism  that  has  no  use  for  morals  and 
no  respect  for  the  experience  of  the  race. 

The  case  has  rarely  been  put  more  clearly  and  discrim¬ 
inatingly  than  by  one  of  our  soundest  critics,  the  editor 
of  The  Literary  Review ,25  in  his  criticism  of  the 
English  novelist  Mr.  D.  H.  Lawrence.  A  clear  vision 
just  here  is  so  demanded  for  the  health  of  our  time  as 
quite  to  justify  the  inclusion  of  some  of  Mr.  Canby’s 
trenchant  sentences : 

“With  rare  exceptions,  Lawrence’s  characterizations  turn 
upon  the  possession,  or  the  lack,  or  the  perversion,  of  the  sex 
instinct.  His  men  and  women  are  consistently  bedevilled  by 
sex,  and  in  his  philosophizing  so  is  he.  For  him,  sex  not 
merely  interpenetrates  the  living  world,  which  is  true,  but 
overshadows  it,  which  is  by  no  means  often  or  necessarily 
true.  .  .  .  Now  our  race  may  have  often  denied  sex  to  their 
own  hurt  or  ignorantly  miscalled  its  manifestations  by  the 
names  of  hate,  religion,  irritability,  courage,  ambition,  or 
wrath;  but  the  age-long  insistence  of  the  wise  upon  keeping 
the  sensual  in  its  place  and  restraining  passion  by  reason  was 
not  utterly  void  of  sense,  nor  has  human  experience  through 
the  Christian  ages  gone  for  naught.  ...  It  is  more  than 
curious  to  list  the  novels  of  the  last  two  years — particularly 
the  first  novels — of  younger  men  and  women,  and  to  see  how 
prevailingly  egoism,  self-development  at  all  costs,  ruthless¬ 
ness,  and  the  selfish  generally  are  lauded  by  illustration  and 
philosophically  implied.  .  .  .  This  uninhibited  ego  is  the 
ambition  of  many  in  our  times,  and  in  Lawrence  they  find  it 
frankly,  discriminatingly  apotheosized.” 

Mr.  Lawrence’s  conclusion  is:  “‘We  must  either  love,  or 
rule,*  and  when  love  wears  out,  it  will  be  rule,  or  obey.” 

Upon  this  conclusion  Mr.  Canby  pertinently  remarks : 

“Well,  this  may  be  true,  and  only  slavery  or  masterfulness 
may  be  able  to  save  us  from  sex.  Perhaps  altruism,  perhaps 

25  June  3,  1922. 


The  Biblical  and  Christian  Approach  155 

love,  as  we  knew  it,  is  bankrupt.  Perhaps  liberalism  and  the 
release  of  energies  which  it  offered  was  a  dream.  Perhaps 
the  ethics  of  Christianity  were  futile  and  are  now  obsolete. 
But  it  will  take  more  than  a  powerfully  saturnine  novelist  to 
convince  us.  Lawrence’s  liberals  are  singularly  arid  and  futile, 
his  Christians  are  mere  pious  platitudes.  The  only  vigor  in 
his  books  is  a  selfish  vigor,  the  only  intensity  springs  from 
sex.  .  .  .  As  an  analysis  of  a  shell-shocked  society  I  find 
all  this  excellent.  As  a  world  philosophy  it  seems  morbid 
moonshine,  the  reflections  of  frightened  men  running  from 
passion  to  take  shelter  in  power.” 

Man  doth  not  live,  then,  by  bread  alone,  “but  by  every 
word  that  proceedeth  out  of  the  mouth  of  God.”  Every 
creative  utterance  of  God,  every  revealing  word,  every 
expressed  purpose,  every  fibre  of  man’s  God-given  nature, 
every  implanted  instinct, — all  this  is  a  part  of  life  for 
man.  None  of  it  may  be  left  out  of  account. 

2.  In  the  second  temptation  Christ  asks :  If  the  kingdom 
is  not  primarily  to  come  by  bread,  by  the  answer  to  even 
real  physical  needs,  is  it  to  come  by  giving  men  over¬ 
whelming  emotional  experiences ,  by  mystery  and  marvel 
and  ecstasy? 

Passion  and  religion  have  much  that  is  akin.  Both 
have  often  appealed  to  the  overwhelming  emotional  ex¬ 
perience,  tending  to  sweep  men  off  their  feet,  as  its  own 
unquestionable  justification.  Men  feel  in  any  form  of 
ecstasy  a  kind  of  “divine  fire,”  for  they  feel  that  they  are 
living  intensely.  There  is  a  large  element  of  truth  here. 
The  thrill  of  passion,  the  thrill  of  beauty  in  nature  and 
art  and  music,  the  thrill  of  discovered  truth,  the  thrill  of 
creative  activity,  the  thrill  of  duty  squarely  faced  and 
done,  the  thrill  of  felt  identity  with  God, — these  are  all 
somehow  akin  to  the  divine,  and  all  need  to  be  taken  into 
due  account. 


156 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

It  is  natural,  therefore,  that  the  religious  leader  should 
be  tempted  to  ask:  Cannot  I  bring  such  marvelous  ex¬ 
hibition  of  the  power  of  God  as  will  sweep  men  perforce 
into  the  kingdom;  as  will  make  it  impossible  for  men  to 
doubt  the  reality  of  God  and  relation  to  him ;  as  shall 
make  men  say  to  themselves,  “This  is  so  marvelous  that 
it  must  be  divine,  and  nothing  else  is  of  any  account 
compared  with  it”?  Here  the  sense  of  God  is  felt  as 
the  enthralling  power  of  a  great  personality. 

Now  here  again  one  may  well  say,  “Yes,  man  shall  live 
by  mystery  and  marvel  and  ecstasy.  We  may  well  believe 
that  the  wonders  of  the  telescopic  and  microscopic  world 
are  only  poor  illustrations  of  the  wonders  of  the  experi¬ 
ences  which  God  may  give  the  soul  with  him.  “Things 
which  eye  saw  not,  and  ear  heard  not,  and  which  entered 
not  into  the  heart  of  man,  whatsoever  things  God  prepared 
for  them  that  love  him.” 

Feeling  and  wonder  do  have  their  great  place  in  the 
life  of  man.  So  fundamental  is  feeling  that  the  sense 
of  reality  everywhere  requires  feeling.  And  in  wonder 
both  philosophy  and  religion  begin.  Religion  cannot 
live  in  a  world  in  which  there  is  not  mystery. 

Man  shall  live  by  mystery  and  marvel  and  ecstasy, 
but,  once  more,  not  by  these  alone,  and  not  by  a  nar¬ 
row  range  of  these,  “but  by  every  word  that  proceedeth 
out  of  the  mouth  of  God.”  The  one-sidedness  of  mystery 
and  marvel  and  ecstasy  is  revealed  in  their  lack  of  ethical 
content,  as  we  have  already  seen. 

Only  through  the  whole  man,  through  the  relation  of 
the  entire  personality,  with  deep  sense  of  the  sacredness 
and  ethical  obligations  of  the  personal  relation,  in  which 
alone  the  whole  man  can  be  expressed,  can  the  full  life  of 
man  come.  For  we  cannot  shut  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that 
there  is  a  very  ugly  element  of  selfish,  ruthless  treachery 


The  Biblical  and  Christian  Approach  157 

in  the  personal  relations  of  those  who  make  supreme  the 
emotional  simply  as  such.  Indeed,  emotional  experience 
itself  cannot  mean  most  without  its  thoughtful  interpre¬ 
tation  by  the  intellect  and  the  whole-hearted  choice  of  the 
will.  Without  this  response  of  the  entire  personality  there 
can  be  no  adequate  revelation  of  God,  no  adequate  king¬ 
dom  of  God.  The  full  revelation  of  God  even  in  the 
beauty  and  glory  of  nature  can  only  come  where  the 
whole  man  is  made  the  organ  of  the  spiritual,  as  Bliss 
Carman  illustrates  in  his  “Vestigia”:* 

I  took  a  day  to  search  for  God, 

And  found  Him  not.  But  as  I  trod 

By  rocky  ledge,  through  woods  untamed. 

Just  where  one  scarlet  lily  flamed 
I  saw  His  footprint  in  the  sod. 

Then  suddenly,  all  unaware, 

Far  off  in  the  deep  shadows,  where 
A  solitary  hermit  thrush 
Sang  through  the  holy  twilight  hush — 

I  heard  His  voice  upon  the  air. 

And  even  as  I  marveled  how 
God  gives  us  Heaven  here  and  now, 

In  a  stir  of  wind  that  hardly  shook 
The  poplar  leaves  beside  the  brook — 

His  hand  was  light  upon  my  brow. 

At  last  with  evening  as  I  turned 
Homeward,  and  thought  what  I  had  learned 
And  all  that  there  was  still  to  probe — 

I  caught  the  glory  of  His  robe 
Where  the  last  fires  of  sunset  burned. 

Back  to  the  world  with  quickening  start 
I  looked  and  longed  for  any  part 
In  making  saving  Beauty  be  .  .  . 

And  from  that  kindling  ecstasy 
I  knew  God  dwelt  within  my  heart. 

*  Quoted  by  the  kind  permission  of  Bliss  Carman. 


158 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

3.  In  Christ’s  answer  to  the  third  temptation  he  is 
facing  another  typically  partial  good.  If  God’s  kingdom 
and  man’s  is  not  to  come  primarily  by  relief  of  physical 
need,  nor  by  mystery,  marvel  and  ecstasy,  then  is  it  to 
come  by  direct  domination  of  the  world’s  kingdoms  and  of 
their  glory  and  authority?  Is  it  to  come  hy  power ,  by 
making  means  into  ends?  Is  the  founder  of  the  kingdom 
to  be  a  world  conqueror,  a  monopolizer  of  world  power? 
Nietzsche  succumbs  to  some  such  temptation  as  that  for 
his  superman.  The  position  is  an  essentially  irreligious 
one,  for  it  has  lost  its  faith  in  the  efficacy  of  spiritual 
forces. 

Still  in  any  case  these  great  human  constructions  of 
the  State — economic,  political,  scientific — have  their 
place.  They  are  inevitable  fields  of  human  endeavor,  cor¬ 
responding  to  many-sided  needs  of  men.  By  these  men 
shall  live,  but  not  by  these  alone.  There  is  not  only  need 
that  they  should  have  the  right  spirit  in  them,  but  it  is 
further  true  that  governments  and  institutions  and  forces 
do  not  exist  for  their  own  sakes.  They  are  means,  not 
ends.  They  are  made  for  man,  not  man  for  them. 
Like  the  machinery  of  the  universe,  they  must  be  subor¬ 
dinate  to  the  great  ends  of  God.  They  must  be  tested 
at  every  step  by  their  service  to  men  and  by  their  rever¬ 
ence  for  men’s  personalities.  Even  Plato  and  Aristotle 
could  put  slavery  into  the  foundation  of  their  ideal  State, 
but  the  Christian  centuries  have  made  that,  at  least,  im¬ 
possible.  The  place  of  governments  and  institutions  is 
therefore  a  subordinate  place.  When  they  are  made  ends 
in  themselves  the  relative  goods  take  the  place  of  the  su¬ 
preme  goods  ;  things  dominate  persons  ;  monstrosities  take 
the  place  of  normal  life  values ;  and  the  devil  replaces 
God,  and  says  falsely  to  the  soul,  “All  these  things  will 
I  give  thee  if  thou  wilt  fall  down  and  worship  me.” 


The  Biblical  and  Christian  Approach  159 

That  is  what  we  do,  when  we  stop  in  mechanism,  when  we 
make  means  into  ends. 

The  world-devastating  war  should  have  demonstrated 
for  us  all  the  utter  futility  of  a  nation  or  a  civilization  or 
a  world  whose  roots  go  not  deeply  down  into  the  spiritual. 
For,  as  Kennedy — in  his  drama,  The  Terrible  Meek — 
makes  his  Roman  Captain  say  at  the  crucifixion : 

“We  go  on  building  our  kingdoms — the  kingdoms  of  this 
world.  We  stretch  out  our  hands,  greedy,  grasping,  tyran¬ 
nical,  to  possess  the  earth.  Domination,  power,  glory,  money, 
merchandise,  luxury,  these  are  the  things  we  aim  at;  but  what 
we  really  gain  is  pest  and  famine,  grudge  labour,  the  en¬ 
slaved  hate  of  men  and  women,  ghosts,  dead  and  death¬ 
breathing  ghosts  that  haunt  our  lives  forever.  It  can’t  last: 
it  never  has  lasted,  this  building  in  blood  and  fear.  Already 
our  kingdoms  begin  to  totter.  Possess  the  earth !  We  have 
lost  it.  We  never  did  possess  it.  We  have  lost  both  earth 
and  ourselves  in  trying  to  possess  it;  for  the  soul  of  the  earth 
is  man  and  the  love  of  him,  and  we  have  made  of  both,  a 
desolation.’’ 

We  have  been  putting  relative  goods  into  the  place  of 
absolute  goods,  national  selfishness  for  love — means  for 
ends. 

All  the  temptations  of  the  wilderness  have  suggested  a 
partial  kingdom,  as  Jesus  clearly  saw:  a  kingdom  by 
bread  alone,  a  kingdom  by  marvel  and  ecstasy  alone,  a 
kingdom  by  power  alone — where  means  have  become  ends. 
But  the  real  kingdom  of  God  must  include  all  goods  and 
must  measure  up  to  God’s  complete  revelation  of  himself 
in  all  the  universe,  inner  and  outer;  must  measure  up  to 
the  infinity  of  the  creative  Source  of  all.  It  must  be 
tested  by  the  quality  of  the  spirit  of  God  himself. 

Let  a  man  honestly  ask  himself  where  the  secret  of 
humanity,  the  secret  of  the  world’s  life  lies.  Can  he  get 


160 


Seeing  Life  Whole 

closer  to  it  anywhere  than  in  the  spirit  of  Christ,  as 
Kennedy  declares  ?  The  prophetic  voice  says  to  Mary  on 
the  wind-swept  hill  of  the  cross : 

“I  tell  you,  woman,  this  dead  son  of  yours,  disfigured, 
shamed,  spat  upon,  has  built  a  kingdom  this  day  that  can 
never  die.  The  living  glory  of  him  rules  it.  The  earth  is  his 
and  he  made  it.  He  and  his  brothers  have  been  moulding 
and  making  it  through  the  long  ages:  they  are  the  only  ones 
who  ever  really  did  possess  it:  not  the  proud,  not  the  idle, 
not  the  wealthy,  not  the  vaunting  empires  of  the  world. 
Something  has  happened  up  here  on  this  hill  today  to  shake 
all  our  kingdoms  of  blood  and  fear  to  the  dust.  The  earth 
is  his,  the  earth  is  theirs,  and  they  made  it.  The  meek,  the 
terrible  meek,  the  fierce  agonizing  meek,  are  about  to  enter 
into  their  inheritance.” 

In  his  parable  of  the  last  judgment,  Jesus  makes  the 
Son  of  Man  say  to  those  who  have  been  characterized  by 
the  tireless  spirit  of  unselfish,  serving  love:  “Come  ye 
blessed  of  my  Father,  inherit  the  kingdom  prepared  for 
you  from  the  foundation  of  the  world.”  Yes ;  for  the 
whole  universe  enters  into  the  completed  kingdom  of  God. 
For  in  man’s  redemption  lies  the  redemption  of  the  whole 
wrorld.  “For  the  earnest  expectation  of  the  creation 
waiteth  for  the  revealing  of  the  sons  of  God.”  “For  the 
creation  itself  also  shall  be  delivered  from  the  bondage  of 
corruption  into  the  liberty  of  the  glory  of  the  children  of 
God/’ 


INDEX 


Anson,  Harold,  147 
Apocalypticism,  a  prevalent  ex¬ 
treme,  143-4 

Apologetic,  need  of  a  new,  1  ff. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  5,  107 
Augmentation  of  Value,  108 
Authority,  an  external  view  of, 

138  ff. 

Behaviorism,  32  ff. 

Best,  staying  persistently  in  the 
presence  of  the,  68  ff. 

Beauty,  goodness,  truth,  the  three 
great  ideals  of,  119  ff. 

Biblical  and  Christian  approach, 

132  ff. 

Bosworth,  Edward  I.,  57 
Brent,  Bishop,  97 
Brook,  Richard,  69 
Browning,  Robert,  74 

Canby,  154-5 
Carman,  Bliss,  157 
Carpenter,  51 
Carruth,  W.  H.,  28 
Christian,  definition  of,  133  ff. 
Christian  Science,  146-8 
Christian  use  of  the  Bible,  134-5 
Clarke,  W.  N.,  137,  143 
Conklin,  27 

Contempt,  the  spirit  of,  97-8 
Converging  of  many  lines  of 
thought,  the  test  of,  116  ff. 
Cou£ism,  dangers  of,  42 
Croly,  Herbert,  17 

Danger  of  making  means  into 
ends,  158  ff. 

Dewey,  42,  109,  113 
Doctrine  of  the  inerrancy  of  the 
Scriptures,  137  ff. 

161 


Dougall,  Miss,  146 
Du  Bois,  Patterson,  90 

Emmet,  C.  W.,  141 
Emotional  one-sidedness,  155  ff. 
Eschatology,  relieving  the  tradi¬ 
tional  Christian,  141-2 
Eucken,  15 

Fears  and  anxieties,  the  Christian 
mastery  of,  47  ff. 

Fiction,  some  tendencies  in  mod¬ 
ern,  154-5 

Freedom  of  investigation,  re¬ 
ligion  need  not  object  to,  22-3 
Friendships,  the  highest  test  for, 
in  reverence  for  personality, 
101  ff. 

Glover,  107,  150 

God  as  the  major  premise  of  all 
our  thinking,  113 
God,  the  will  of,  revealed  in  two 
ways,  36  ff. 

God,  transcendence  and  imma¬ 
nence  of,  125  ff. 

Goodness,  truth,  beauty,  the  three 
great  ideals  of,  119  ff. 

Great  minds,  the  test  of,  115 

Haering,  124,  127 
Herrmann,  149 
Higher  criticism,  135-6 
Hocking,  95,  114,  115 
Hoffding,  4,  121 
Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  96 
Honesty,  62  ff. 

Human  society,  creation  of  a 
higher  type,  16  ff. 

Huxley,  36 


162 


Indent 


Immanence  and  transcendence  of 
God,  125  ff.;  the  necessity  of 
both  for  the  Christian  view  of 
God  in  the  world,  127-8 
Individuality,  the  miracle  of,  87-8 
Influence  and  domination,  99-100 
Ingelow,  Jean,  81 
Intimacy  of  friendships  to  be 
guarded,  96-7 

James,  74,  92,  100,  105,  107,  117 
Jesus,  19,  40,  50 
Jevons,  107 
Jones,  Rufus,  150-51 

Kennedy,  159,  160 

Leuba,  144 

Lordship  of  Christ  in  the  Bible, 
often  denied,  139 
Lotze,  112,  118,  121-2,  129 

Man  as  the  image  of  God,  24 
Many  minds,  the  test  of,  115 
McDougall,  29,  73,  76,  83,  114 
McGiffert,  18,  132 
Meaning  and  process,  questions 
of,  10-11;  the  possible  harmony 
of,  123  ff. 

Means,  danger  of  making  into 
ends,  158  ff. 

Mechanism,  the  mission  of,  121- 
23 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  83 
Modern  Psychology,  great  prac¬ 
tical  inferences  from,  ST  ff.; 
these  inferences  indubitably 
Christian,  40-41 

Modern  science,  contributions  of, 
to  the  ideal  interests,  11  ff., 
13  ff- 

Modesty,  65  ff. 

Miinsterberg,  31 

Mysticism,  a  false  type  of,  148  ff. 
Nash,  H.  S.,  16 

Natural  ills,  the  conquest  of, 
47  ff' 

Necessary  truths  as  eternal 
modes  of  God’s  activity,  128 


Old  Testament,  overattention  to, 

137  ff. 

One’s  own  self  the  key  to  the 
universe,  128-9 

Organic  view  of  truth,  110  if. 

Paradox,  the  test  of,  117 
Paul,  68 
Paulsen,  10,  119 
Personal  association,  70  ff. 
Personal  and  ethical  approach, 
75  ff. 

Personal  relations,  our  whole  con¬ 
stitution  looks  to,  78  ff. 
Philosophical  approach,  104  ff. 
Philosophic  points  of  view,  fun¬ 
damental,  110  ff. 

Philosophy,  definition  of  the 
sphere  of,  106  ff.;  relation  to 
the  special  sciences,  107-8;  ten¬ 
dency  to  underrate,  104  ff. 
Physical,  the  place  of,  in  life, 
152  ff. 

Pragmatism,  negative  and  posi¬ 
tive,  113-14 
Pratt,  32 

Prayer  for  the  dead,  142-3 
Premillennialism,  literalistic,  143-4 
Present-day  obstacles  to  a  Bib¬ 
lical  approach  to  a  Christian 
philosophy  of  life,  137  ff. 
Pringle-Pattison,  127 
Process  and  meaning,  questions 
of,  10-11;  the  possible  harmony 
of,  123  ff. 

Providence,  faith  in  God’s,  50 
Psychology,  definition  of,  29  ff. 
Psychology  of  power,  43-4 

Reality,  the  three  spheres  of, 
118 /f.;  the  is,  the  must,  and 
the  ought,  118^*. 

Religion,  positive  gains  for,  from 
evolution,  26  ff. 

Religious  faith  and  evolution, 
19  ff. 

Respect  for  the  liberty  of  others, 
necessary  for  one’s  own  char¬ 
acter,  88-9;  necessary  for  one’s 
own  influence,  89  ff. ;  needed  in 


Index  163 


all  personal  relations,  91-2; 
necessary  for  happiness,  92  ff. 

Respect  for  others,  88  ff.;  in¬ 
cludes  respect  for  the  liberty 
of  others,  88  ff. ;  includes  rever¬ 
ence  for  the  sanctity  of  others’ 
inner  personality,  94  ff. 

Revelation  of  the  will  of  God,  in 
the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus, 
36;  in  man’s  nature,  36 

Reverence  for  personality,  75  ff.; 
includes  self-respect,  80  ff. 

Reverence  for  the  sanctity  of 
others’  inner  personality,  94  ff. ; 
necessary  for  influence,  98  ff. ; 
necessary  for  happiness,  100  ff. 

Schiller,  53 

Schmid,  25 

Science’s  threefold  self-restric¬ 
tion,  21 

Scientific  approach,  8  ff. 

Scientific  method,  9,  15  ff. 

Scientific  spirit,  8,  18-19 

Scott,  E.  F.,  136,  140 

Seeing  life  whole,  iff.;  the  Chris¬ 
tian  way  of,  151  ff. 

Seeming  unreality  of  the  spiritual 
life,  130-31 

Self-mastery,  problem  of,  44  ff. 

Self-respect,  included  in  rever¬ 
ence  for  personality,  80  ff.; 
affects  our  respect  for  others 
also,  82  ff.;  necessary  for  influ¬ 
ence,  85  ff. ;  necessary  for  hap¬ 
piness,  86  jf. 

Services,  only  two  supreme,  to 
render,  58 


Solitariness  of  the  human  soul, 
94-6 

Spiritualism,  143-6 
Spiritual  life,  purposed  seeming 
unreality  of,  130-31 
Stevens,  James,  49-50 
Streeter,  108,  120,  138-9 

Thomas,  Norman,  5 
Thomson,  J.  Arthur,  27 
Thomson  and  Geddes,  21-2 
Three  great  ideals  of  truth, 
goodness  and  beauty,  119  ff. 
Transcendence  and  immanence  of 
God,  125  jf. ;  the  necessity  of 
both  for  the  Christian  view  of 
God  in  the  world,  127-8 
Truth,  goodness,  beauty,  the  three 
great  ideals  of,  119  ff. 

Truth  or  reality,  tests  of,  111 

Value,  the  place  of,  in  philoso¬ 
phy,  53  ff. 

Values,  a  relation  to  personality 
inherent  in  all,  55;  introduction 
to,  56  jf.;  of  life,  the  way  to 
them  all  essentially  the  same 
way,  55 

Waggett,  26 

Whole  man,  the  organ  of  the 
spiritual,  114  jf. 

Witness,  qualities  of  an  effective, 
58  ff. 

World,  larger  and  more  signifi¬ 
cant,  14  ff. 

Worship  as  involving  truth,  good¬ 
ness  and  beauty,  120  ff. 


. 


: — 


Date  Due 


4255 


